It’s hard to know where to start the conversation about college.
Is it what to study? Or where to go?
Peggy Jenkins, founder of Palouse Pathways, a Moscow community-based organization that helps families explore college and career options, found money is often the barrier.
“It seems like you can’t even start a conversation because money is the issue,” Jenkins said. “So it’s like let’s start there.”
Palouse Pathways hosted its first “College Within Reach” event this weekend, a paying-for-college fair focused on financial aid, scholarships and other ways to pay for school.
Representatives from area universities’ financial aid offices had booths, along with Launch NW and other local organizations that provide scholarships, ROTC, Jobcorps, and Idaho Department of Labor Apprenticeship Programs.
Julie Yi, 16, said she will be the first person in her family to go to college, so it’s uncharted territory for the whole family. She hopes to go on to law school at Yale University but is unsure where she wants to go for undergrad.
Lysander Elgar, a 17-year-old senior, has his heart set on studying biomedical engineering at Northwestern University.
He applied early and is doing everything he can to get in. Northwestern provides need-based financial aid, so Elgar isn’t expecting to pay the high sticker price.
Both Yi and Elgar rushed in to hear the event’s keynote speaker, Amanda Miller, a financial aid specialist and college advisor.
She walked attendees through the different types of financial aid from government aid like FAFSA to private scholarships.
She told students to apply for scholarships that are specific, so they have a higher likelihood of receiving them. Miller suggested creating a noun list of all the things a student is like Idahoan, musician, student-athlete, football player, national honors society member, etc.
Families can then use that list to find scholarships that fit them. One parent asked for tips on getting their student to fill out the numerous scholarship applications they’d likely need to pay for school.
Miller suggested the assembly line approach, parents find the scholarships and students fill out the applications.
She mentioned a frequently used statistics that millions in scholarship money goes unclaimed each year but it’s not as straightforward as it seems, Miller said. Many of those unawarded scholarships are extremely specific, meaning most students won’t qualify.
“There’s a scholarship at my alma mater, Davidson, where if you’re a valedictorian from Vicksburg, Mississippi, they have a full ride for you,” Miller said. “But if that person doesn’t exist, then they can’t award the scholarship.”
Miller’s presentation was recorded and will be available on the Palouse Pathways website.
When Roseanne August and her son, Grayson, 12, ran into someone handing out Palouse Pathways flyers at the farmer’s market both mother and son wanted to attend.
Grayson said he recently found his calling during a science olympiad optics event when he learned about prisms and light refraction in the eye. He now wants to be an optometrist.
While Grayson is young to be thinking about paying for college, August said she feels like it’s never too early. She was a first generation college student and remembers how hard it was to figure everything out.
Now, she advises science students at Washington State University. She planned to take some of what she learned Saturday back to her own students.
“It’s very well done,” she said of the event.
Jenkins said about 100 people attended the event. Of the 39 parents and students that met with Karen Richel, a personal finance expert from the University of Idaho extension, about 85% were Pell Grant eligible, Jenkins noted.
Palouse Pathways hosts events geared toward educating families and students about preparing for college and their future career. They have a newsletter and a scholars program that helps students grades 9- through 11 prepare and pay for their post-graduation plan.
