For the 2014-2015 school year, 5,533 Ball State students received some sort of scholarship money, totaling $29,505,399.
$23,125,403.80 came from Ball State, through departmental awards, Ball State Foundation awards or academic scholarships. The remainder came from either state or private scholarships.
Data obtained from John McPherson.
A new website is trying to take some of the stress of scholarship searching away from students.
ScholarshipOwl, founded by Kenny Sandorffy, is a website where students can input and save their information into a single profile. This profile is matched up with scholarships for which a student is eligible, and the applications for those awards are filled out automatically by the student's initial profile. The basic version of the site is free, with the option to upgrade to more premium features.
Sandorffy created the site to match up students with as many awards as possible. In a press release, he said his experiences applying for scholarships showed him how complicated the process was and that a better way was needed.
“It took me longer to complete an application for a single scholarship than it did to apply to the college I ultimately attended,” Sandorffy wrote. “Wading through the scholarship process left me frustrated and unhappy then and remained with me for years afterward.”
Michael Jefferies, a freshman political science major, said he signed up for two scholarship databases while applying for college but didn’t end up using them. He said it was too hard to find scholarships he was eligible for and could easily apply for.
“It was a little bit overwhelming, looking at hundreds of pages filled with obscure scholarships,” Jefferies said. “You’d click on them and thought it’d be easy, but each one requires lots of work.”
While he did end up receiving the Presidential Scholarship from Ball State along with one sponsored by his elementary school, Jefferies said he wished he searched more. He thinks a service like ScholarshipOwl would have encouraged him to do so.
“I could've used more money for books. But I was not prepared for that sort of undertaking,” Jefferies said. “Life takes over, you’re already at college and it’s too late. [ScholarshipOwl] would have been really helpful.”
John McPherson, assistant vice president of enrollment services at Ball State, gave two pieces of advice for students looking for scholarship services. The first was to avoid paying for services that charge a fee, because many are available for free. Secondly, he advised students to read the fine print before signing up for anything.
“Some companies use the lure of free money to collect student data to sell to other companies,” McPherson. “Any reputable company will provide an accurate disclosure describing what they do with the personal data collected.”
Ball State provides a list of free scholarship search opportunities on its website, which can be found here.
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