To students and their parents, merit scholarships are rewards for doing all the right things in high school. But not all students know what colleges value, or even believe college is within their reach. What if colleges could use merit aid not only to reward students for their behavior, but also to shape it?
That’s the premise behind Raise, a new online service that will allow students to rack up “microscholarships” from participating colleges for completing specific tasks starting in ninth grade.
Here’s how it works. Students can follow any combination of the colleges—about 20 have signed up so far—on the website. Each college chooses which actions it wants to encourage, and how much money to assign to each one. It could offer, say, a couple of hundred dollars to a student who took the PSAT or earned a B or better in a mathematics class. If the student enrolled in one of the colleges where she had earned scholarships, the total amount she had accumulated from it—which at some colleges might be up to tens of thousands of dollars—would help cover her expenses as an undergraduate.
Even if students do not end up attending any of the colleges where they have earned scholarships, Raise can still help them, said Preston R. Silverman, one of its co-founders. “Either way, these are all actions that encourage students’ personal development and make them a more competitive applicant for any college,” he said.
While the reward program will eventually be open to all students, Raise is especially interested in helping those from low-income families. Research on saving for college suggests the practice provides an academic benefit as well as a financial one because students are more motivated to do well in school when they expect to attend college. Perhaps earning microscholarships can serve the same dual function, helping students whose families cannot afford to set aside money for college.
A Way to ‘Demystify’ Admissions
For now, Raise is working with six high-school “beta partners” that serve low-income students. One partner is Green Dot Public Schools, a charter network in Los Angeles. The new service appealed to the network because it will give students “a visual of what it takes to get yourself a scholarship,” said Marco Petruzzi, its chief executive.
Raise’s founders are still ironing out the for-profit service’s business model. But it is free to students and high schools, while participating colleges pay a small annual fee. Raise has also gotten start-up funds from sources including a contest sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Eventually, Raise hopes to make most of its money by charging companies to offer their own scholarships on the site.
Raise offers one way colleges can “demystify” admissions, said Sundar Kumarasamy, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at the University of Dayton, which is participating. In addition to signaling to low-income students that college is in reach, it could convince middle-income students that a private college like Dayton can be affordable, Mr. Kumarasamy said.
Tulane University plans to use Raise to encourage students to pursue the leadership and community-service activities it values, said Faye Tydlaska, director of undergraduate admission and associate vice president for enrollment management. Tulane, which considers applicants’ demonstrated interest, will also provide a microscholarship to students who attend one of its events or visit the campus, she said.
Jonathan Burdick, dean of college admission and vice provost at the University of Rochester, was “a fan of this idea from the moment I heard about it,” he said. Imagine a low-income student who is bused to a school where he can take IB courses, Mr. Burdick said. Seeing money from colleges add up will help that student explain his dedication when friends ask why he bothers.
Still, Mr. Burdick wonders how to set up the program so that any interested student can earn scholarships at Rochester, without its turning into “another way already-advantaged students” get a lift they don’t need. One possible fix: creating two different caps on the total amount of Rochester scholarships that students can earn in Raise, with a higher cap for low-income students. It’s worth some tinkering, Mr. Burdick thinks, to make sure Raise gives low-income students a boost.
