#198 Match Majors to Money: A Scholarship Strategy with Lisa, Dave & Mike Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 0:51
We’ve got a secret weapon for unlocking more college and trade scholarships for your high school or college student, and we’re sharing it in this replay of our September expert panel I joined scholarship strategist Dave Peterson to connect the dots between career direction, fit to major and winning both institutional and outside awards. We break down high demand majors, computer science, business, engineering, nursing, psychology and music performance and share scholarship suggestions for each you’ll also hear how clear personal narrative beats a list of past achievements when it comes to both admissions and financial awards. Our moderator Mike Bergen of chariot learning and the test and the rest podcast leads a robust Q and A covering when to start why filing the FAFSA matters and how students can keep earning scholarships even after high school graduation, I’m Lisa Mark Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into this really fantastic replay.

Mike Bergin 1:56
Well, hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening to discuss scholarships and majors, how clarity can unlock more college aid. You’re here for the majors, you’re here for the scholarships. You’re here with questions about college admissions and fit and your life path. These are weighty issues we’re going to tackle. Fortunately, we have some real experts on this, on both of these topics. I’d first like to start by introducing Lisa Marco Robbins, Lisa, can you let everybody know a bit about your background?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:33
Yeah, absolutely. So my my heartbeat truly is and it’s so geeky, helping people 15 to 25 figure out their path and their purpose. So I am a career coach for that age group. They are my favorite age group, and I’ve worked with all ages, but it’s my favorite age group to figure out what comes after graduation, and it’s something that I’m supporting, not just the student for an outcome, but they’re parents too. I’ve launched three of my own kids into adulthood. It’s scary. There’s a lot of emotions with that. We’re all three of us. Are that that age group, right? And so we’re here to support everybody in it. And yeah, that’s how I am. Flourish coaching, and my way that we do it is launch Career Clarity, which is our online course with life support. Wonderful.

Mike Bergin 3:25
Dave Peterson, the scholarship Coach, can you tell everyone about your background?

Dave Peterson 3:29
Absolutely. Well, I got into the world of scholarships out of necessity. We had not saved anywhere near enough money to get my son through college. Fortunately, I realized that early enough that we I realized we needed to figure out an alternate funding source, and so I learned everything I could about the world of scholarships. He started applying as a high school junior, he won three scholarships that year. Senior year, we went all in as a family. I’m finding the scholarships for him. He’s applying. I’m reviewing his essays and applications. Long story short, at high school graduation, he had earned 18 outside scholarships, and maybe we’ll clarify what an outside scholarship is compared to institutional aid. And then by the time he graduated college, he had earned 23 outside scholarships, which covered two thirds of his college expenses, tuition, room, board, books, fees, the whole nine yards, the other 1/3 was covered by institutional aid, and we spent 1500 bucks all in for his degree. So because of that, a lot of friends and family started asking for help with scholarships, and that’s where my business scholarship GPS was born. And I work with families in a number of different ways, but my, my primary program is the scholarship GPS course. It’s our flagship program that shares everything I know about scholarships for anybody who’s who’s in that program. Fantastic.

Mike Bergin 4:54
And I’m Mike Bergen, your moderator for this evening, and my reason for. Here is that after more than 30 years at the intersection of education and admissions, anytime people are having really productive and informative conversations about anything having to do with the path to college or success in life, I want to be part of that conversation. We do a lot of this at the test and the rest podcast of which I am a co host. Unfortunately, my co host, Amy Seeley, could not join me to manage the moderation tonight, so Dave and Lisa are gonna have to go easy on me. I am the founder of chariot learning, a company based in upstate New York that provides expert, individualized sat and a C, T, prep to the world. I am the writer of the roots to words, free word of the day newsletter and the tutor of the newsletter. I’m the president emeritus of the national test prep Association. There’s a lot to talk about, what we’re going to cover. And just to be clear, we’re talking about scholarships, we’re talking about college majors. We have a lot of both points that we’ve come up with together and also some submitted questions. And thank you for that. While we’re speaking, if people want to share questions in the chat, please do, and I’ll be sure to pick them up. Another really valuable reason to stay to the end is because we’re going to be talking about some of the most popular and meaningful majors and specific scholarships associated with each one, and there will be, if we’re fortunate, time for more questions at the end. So so please put questions that you have in the chat as they come to you. Don’t worry, we won’t call anyone else by anyone out by name, and the camera will not be focused on you. But I want to dive right in, because there’s so much to discuss. And Dave, I’m going to start with you. You have spoken about scholarships, and you just alluded to the private or the outside scholarships, you say that they’re not awards for past achievements. What is the perspective through which families and applicants should be approaching scholarships with then?

Dave Peterson 7:15
So you have to think about, why is this organization offering a scholarship, and particularly when we’re talking about outside scholarships, but I think it even applies to institutional aid, is that they are looking to be a part of that student’s future. If your scholarship application is just simply a resume or a brag sheet in essay form, that’s really not what scholarships are looking for. They want to know what’s this person going to do beyond tomorrow, Beyond Today and tomorrow, and how are we, as the scholarship provider, helping that student launch into that future thing? Whether that’s their future college major, their future career, how are they going to make the world a better place through whatever it is they’re going to be doing in the future, particularly for outside scholarships. These are marketing tools. You know, as nice as Coca Cola probably is as a corporation, they are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. And if you go on their the Coca Cola scholars website, they are still talking about past scholars from last year, five years, 10 years ago, because they want to get the message out, we Coca Cola help this student achieve this great thing. So when I’m saying scholarships are not an award for past achievement, that’s that’s really what I’m saying.

Mike Bergin 8:36
You’re also saying that kind of, it’s not just meant to be meaningful for the applicants, but the organizations or individuals that award them, there’s something in it for them too.

Dave Peterson 8:47
Yes, absolutely. And, and that thing is PR. You know, it’s goodwill and getting, getting the brand out there in a positive way.

Mike Bergin 8:57
Thank you. Speaking of misconceptions, Lisa many parents and applicants assume that the decision to figure out a major or a path comes after you begin college. Now, while that may be true there, that has major implications for the ability to even get into the school of your choice and some other issues. So can you talk a bit about how Career Clarity can help prevent mishaps in that area?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 9:28
Sure, so we do assume you know that it’s it’s figure outable later, and of course, it is, but doors are already closing and options are off the table when we wait till after high school graduation for college bound students. The reality is that 73% of all students who attend college go to a research university. They do not go to a liberal arts college at research universities the role of the major that you list on your application. That is going to play a role on if you get in. Now, we did a study of the state flagships, and we found that at 8% of schools of this 50 state flagships, the role of major did not truly play any role. So that’s only four schools, my friends out of 50 where it didn’t play any role on getting in and getting aid and all of the things. For the rest of them, the school’s either admitted directly to the major. So you absolutely had to, as Dave said, talk about where you’re headed. What have you done in your past? Annie Borst, who, at the time, was at the University of Illinois. Urbana Champaign, now he’s at University of Georgia. I was just with him last week at natcac. He said in 150 words, my friend, so you got to be concise. You got to tell us what you’ve done in your past, to inform in another 150 words what you’re going to do in your future. That’s what they want to know. And so Rick Clark from Georgia Tech, he was on my podcast back in April, and they don’t even admit to major, but he talked about the role that FTM fit to major plays on getting in, and it plays a significant role. They want to know how the even those schools that don’t admit to major, they say on the common app, what’s your intended major after you get here, not you know some schools, what a major Are you applying to? But otherwise, what’s your intended major? And they’re going to evaluate the applicant on what you’ve done to inform that decision, and that’s called fit to major. So there are some majors, such as at Georgia Tech, computer science, nursing, at many schools, the major is actually that Dave and I are going to talk about with scholarships tied directly to them later in this talk, that they’re off the table if you’re already on campus because they are capacity capped, or they don’t even allow students to switch into them later. So it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 1 11:55
Oh, you’re muted. You’re muted. Mike,

Mike Bergin 11:58
that’s just being polite. All right, that’s terrific. Now, Dave, if a student does develop a direction, are there implications for scholarship applications with that?

Dave Peterson 12:15
Sure, absolutely so there’s really kind of two obvious ones. One would be, if you know your future path, there are major specific scholarships, both outside scholarships, as well as institutional scholarships, so scholarships from that particular department. So that’s, that’s the first. The second would be, even for some, from some of these senior year scholarships that are open to any any major students going into any major, having that defined, what I call personal narrative. So that’s the story of where they’re going, backed up, like Lisa said, by past experiences that demonstrate that actual interest and ability to get to that future, future goal. Even those general scholarships still want a student’s personal narrative, they still want to, they want to know the student is has a plan that they’re they’re going to achieve something. And so the students that I’ve worked with, even when they’re applying to quote general scholarships that are open to any major, they are still having success by having that personal narrative that relates to their future college major.

Mike Bergin 13:21
All right, having a direction definitely has some impact on crafting your applications. Lisa, how should students get started if they if they have no idea about majors or what they might be interested in, what are some steps that they can take?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 13:40
Well, really, we begin with the end in mind. That’s what I always say. You know, Stephen Covey has preached that for years and has Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And we begin with the end in mind, and we reverse engineer it. The mistake that I see families making is we ask the student, first of all, where do you want to go to school? And that it’s often based on geography. You know, you ask, I live in Cincinnati. Mike is in upstate New York. You ask somebody in New York in January where they want to go to school, they’re suddenly saying Florida. You ask in July, when it’s lovely up there, Mike, I drove through in July when you were not there, and it they might want to stay there. So it’s geography and football and all of the things that are informing that decision. And then they go, Okay, I got in. Now, what do I want to major in? And then, typically, okay, now, what am I going to do with that major? Like I said, you can still obviously figure it out, but some options are going to be off the table at that point. So when you begin with the end of mind, you begin with career exploration, not college major exploration. What you study in college does not dictate what you’re gonna do for the rest of your life, right? So let’s start with understanding careers, but you have to first also be sure you’re understanding yourself. At a deep level, we build self awareness, and then we tie that self awareness into what what careers fit, and then what major, or majors there might be, a bunch of them can get you a spot working in that. And then, okay, what schools are good for that major? You know, there’s over 3000 schools. There’s a school that’s gonna fit for your kid, that they’re gonna like the campus and the vibe and all the things. All right,

Mike Bergin 15:27
let’s go back to a point, Dave, we were discussing that the scholarship providers, they have their own perspectives and purpose. How can applicants keep that in mind for their own benefit.

Dave Peterson 15:44
Well, go back and do a bit of research about this organization. So one of my favorite scholarships that I recommend for every high school student is the VFW Veterans of Foreign war. It’s called The Voice of democracy scholarship open to students grades nine through 12, there’s no minimum GPA

Mike Bergin 16:01
required. Daughter got that one

Dave Peterson 16:06
and just learning a little bit about what is the VFW, what is their mission? Their mission is not to provide scholarships. That’s that’s secondary. Their mission is to help veterans. So regardless of what that year’s essay prompt is, can you talk nicely about veterans as part of your essay? Now this, this is not relating to college major, but I’m just using that as an example. So I’m not saying that you need to say I love Coca Cola when you’re applying for the Coca Cola scholarship, but if you’re talking Well, Coca Cola might be a bad example, because you don’t actually submit an essay for the first round, but we’ll pretend that you do. Let’s say you’re submitting an essay. You could potentially talk about something like, you know, business, because Coca Cola is obviously a major corporation. So really, just understanding what is this this organization do? What are their mission? What are their values, and then how do I align with what I want to do in the future with that, obviously, authenticity is going to be important. Just, you know, if, if you don’t like veterans, then please don’t apply for the VFW scholarship, and God help you that, that would be terrible. But, you know, it’s a pretty obvious and blunt example to make a larger point, hopefully

Mike Bergin 17:20
you used a powerful word there authenticity. And I think authenticity should inform every aspect of the admissions process, where part of this whole crucible is figuring out who you are better, figuring out where you’re going. Lisa, that sense of authenticity, who a student is, what their personal wiring or values are. How can it? How can somebody kind of operationalize this process and figure out how to tap into that for figuring out their path and then manifest that in some of their essays.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:04
Sure, so let me say a word about authenticity real quick. And you know, Rick Clark did make the point on my podcast about and he’s the Georgia Tech one. He’s like, please do not apply to social work, because you think it’s going to get you in here, and then we look at your application and your essays, and it screams, you know, aerospace engineering, right? Or chemical engineering. And he’s at a tech school, but they will see right through if you have an authentic application, and that includes essays, right? So first of all, it’s just like we say, they can tell if your parents wrote your essays, right. They can also tell if there’s a lack of alignment. So when we build self awareness, we look at, first of all, what motivates me to work. So we assess personality through the lens of the Berkman assessment, and all of our students take it, but there are a lot of assessments out there. You know, I think one of the mistakes, if we want to go back to myths and mistakes and do some busting there, a lot of times, we want the easy path, and we want to be able to take an assessment and fill in the dots or click the box and for it to give us the magical answer. And it doesn’t work that way. You know, everything that is valuable takes effort. It takes time. It’s not quick, it’s not easy. And so the process is, while I believe that personality assessments can be informative, they are not. The answer is the process, right? So when it comes to the self awareness piece, first of all, teens do have the ability to gain self awareness, even though they seem when they’re with their parents sometimes. And I remember my kids are all up in their head and in your face, or walking away from your face, turning their back on you. They do have the ability to tap in and do this when they’re getting a framework to do it right. Okay, so what motivates me to work? What are my strengths? What do I need and expect from other people in my work environment? What are my values? And finally, what are my aptitudes? And that’s where we have to get really, really honest with ourselves on aptitudes, because that is about, what am I good at? Academically? Right? Everybody wants to rave about STEM and all the opportunities and the money and all the things, but the reality is, those are the majors that people change out of the most, and it’s often because students are successful in math, in physics in high school. It’s a whole nother level when they get there. So those are the five things we tap into when we’re looking at what are my superpowers, so I can figure out what’s going to fit.

Mike Bergin 20:48
So very interesting. We recently released on the test and the rest podcast, a conversation about ikigai and how that impacts College, the college application process. And ikigai, for people who are not familiar with this Japanese concept, is kind of the overlapping circles for what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. And if you can find your place in the overlapping Venn diagram, there may be something there. But, and this is kind of a follow up to you, Lisa, picking up on a question that was submitted to us before we started. What if the thing that somebody really loves is not something that they want to monetize, necessarily? They want to talk about going into business for this or studying, but it’s still an essential part of who they are? Is there a way to get that into the application, where they’re maintaining their focus on their path in life. But there’s more to them than just that.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:47
Yeah, I remember looking at this question, what was submitted, and there’s a part of this question that taps into like, find your passion, right, right? And I think that’s horrendous advice for us to give anybody, because first of all, I know that that puts up an undue pressure on our teens, as if, oh, there’s one thing that I should be so passionate about that it’s all I want to do, and I got to work it into my work life. Not true, my friends. Okay, so undue pressure, let’s remove the pressure. I’ve also seen over time that passion grows with proficiency, and passions shift over time, right? So let’s believe that about passion. Okay, now this question also gets into like we don’t we want kids to be able to do the things that they love, right, and not just chase trying to check boxes to get in some place. And that piece is essential. It makes me think of a student that I was working with before who he was never going to go to state and swimming. He was in our course, and he said, Do I need to quit my swim team to be able to do these things? And I said, No, but we looked at, we did an extracurricular inventory. That’s a fantastic time of year to do this, by the way, if you have a high schooler and where he thought, what lights you up that we would not let go of for this kid, it was recreational swimming. It just it was his community. It was fun. But he had some lower level things that he wasn’t putting a lot of time into, but the cumulative effect of that was big, and they were things that he was just checking boxes on some of them, some of them he liked a little bit. And then we created some we shed some of those off, and then we added some things to work on the clarity piece, right? So how do we work that in? There’s great essays, as Dave knows, when we talk about essays a lot, there’s great essays that you have to answer across the board, and you can weave in both the personal side and the professional side, but I think both have to be there to be truly, authentically yourself, right? Sometimes it’s what’s your favorite extracurricular, like, that’s that’s one that you work in. It might that particular essay may not have anything to do with your career path, but you’re gonna have an opportunity to talk about your career path elsewhere, and I that would be a piece of advice, like on college applications, don’t make everything. Don’t make your personal statement, and then the extracurricular essay, then the community essay. Don’t make them all about why this major. That’s another mistake. I think people

Mike Bergin 24:15
you definitely want to make sure that you’re using each statement differently, each supplement to cover different aspect of your multifaceted, multifaceted fascinatingness. Is that a word fascinating? I should

Lisa Marker-Robbins 24:29
know again. Can you say that five times fast,

Mike Bergin 24:33
Dave does that aspect of the way a student spends their personal time inform their scholarship applications as well. We’re not just talking about their majors and goals, but also their interests.

Dave Peterson 24:46
Yeah, it definitely can first. You know, the first thing you always have to respond to the prompt, if we’re if we’re talking essays or sometimes scholarships, are now asking for a student to make a video instead of. An essay. So everything always is subservient to that. What is the prompt? And are you answering the question or questions being asked? But as Lisa was talking, I was thinking about that question, because I saw it come in before, before we started, and there are even scholarships for students who might have this side passion that’s not going to lead to their their career, thinking of one. You know, if you love movies, there’s one called Dr choose Movie Reviews. Now, I don’t imagine there are too many people listening to this who have a student who plan to become the next Cisco and Ebert, but they might like movies, right? So this could be something they really enjoy. And it’s, it’s a, still a scholarship opportunity to to tap into something they love. So, yeah, you know, all these kind of extracurriculars that maybe not leading to a career, there is still opportunity. And you know, we talked about some of these other scholarships that require multiple essays, like Lisa was talking about, kind of on the admission side, very similar. You know, you don’t have to if, you know, scholarship has three or four essays, not every essay has to say. This the same thing in a different way. You can talk about different things. And you know, if one of the questions is, you know, what’s your favorite extra or, you know, hobby or extracurricular, fantastic,

Mike Bergin 26:18
because time is running short, I want, believe it or not, time is running short. We still have a half hour, but there’s so much more to talk about. I want to ask. And I’ll start with you, Lisa, what is the biggest piece of advice that you would give to a family overwhelmed by the pressure to get everything right for this multi faceted and I’m using that word again, because there just seems to be almost a kaleidoscope of fragments of things that you’ve got to get you’ve got to get the financial piece right. You’ve got to get the interest right. You’ve got to get the academic piece right, the extracurricular piece right. There’s so much to deal with. It can be stressful, feels chaotic. Is there some clarity that you can shine on this process?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 27:06
Yeah, well, first of all, I’m starting early, not freshman year, by the way, so if you have a freshman Well, Dave, actually, for scholarships, you would maybe start a little bit freshman year, and we’ve had that discussion on my podcast. But, but but for, you know, test prep, Mike, you’re the expert on that. Oh yeah, don’t worry. Yeah, I know you will for, you know, for test prep, for college major career development, that type of work, you should always be studying hard. But the other stuff that you know, Mike, what you work on and what I do, 10th grade. When you start in 10th grade, you’re not feeling this. The clock ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking. I gotta go, go, go, go, go. You will have more ease and flow and less stress. By starting early, you also have time to take an A, C, T and not do great and regroup, right? Do a real world experience through a career that you are considering and find out, Oh, it doesn’t fit. I think my my student, Nate, who, years ago, he now works on Wall Street, but years ago, as a sophomore, he had an IT internship, and he thought he wanted to go into computers, and he did it for the summer, paid internship. Internships do exist, my friends for high schoolers. And he was like, I hated it, but they did a project with the finance department. He’s like, Oh, I might be interested in that. So then we had time to, like, vet that. And he found a fifth there, right? So start early. Trust that your kid has the ability to dig in and do this work and make informed decisions. But I would also say, when it comes to the work I do, you’re making a first decision of the first step into work. You’re not making a forever decision. There will be through lines. I always say career coaching, career advising often takes place at a place in time, right? So if I’ve got somebody in my course is taking place for a place in time, career development should be lifelong. You should be growing and developing like if I did not have an attitude of career development, we would not be on zoom right now my friends, because I would have never learned how to do it or learn how to do a course. So lifelong learning would be a big piece of advice I would give

Mike Bergin 29:25
fantastic Dave. How about you?

Dave Peterson 29:28
Well, what I was thinking of when Lisa, you were talking about starting early, and the kind of freedom and the ability to go through it at a methodical pace and not feel rushed and stressed, intentionality is the word that kept coming to mind for me, and I think that applies to every aspect of college prep. And you know, if, if your student is doing well in school, but then they just come home and they’re scrolling, you know, whatever kids scroll these days, Tiktok or whatever, or, you know, playing video games all day. And. Yeah, they’re not, they’re not having these experiences. They’re going to allow them to figure out what their future is going to be, unless, by chance, maybe they’re going to be a game developer. Who knows if that’s even going to be a career in five years with AI, maybe Lisa, you can talk to that. But getting getting out of their bedroom, getting off their phones, and experiencing the real world, doing real things, they’re first of all going to be far more interesting people. I think they’re going to be happier, and it will allow them to figure out what they they enjoy and what they’re they’re good at and passionate about, and along the way, you can apply for some scholarships, applying early. I mentioned my son started as a junior. I tell people our biggest regret is we didn’t start earlier. So just that, being intentional about things. And, you know, Mike, you had a great post on Facebook today or yesterday about, essentially, that, that, you know, putting in, putting in the work, the results are about putting in the work, right?

Mike Bergin 30:59
It’s true. You know, I look at all of this from the very foundation, right? We’re talking about seeking out higher education and funding that pursuit. Well, you have to be education minded in that work with lots of students that come very late to the idea that their time in school should be a time of learning, not just getting grades right, like they’re two very different positions there. And I would urge students to take the classes that interest them the most, but whatever classes they’re taking, show their interest by achieving excellence, I will strongly recommend that students as early as possible. You can’t start too early in building a reading habit, reading 15 minutes a day, everything about test prep, that much of what is difficult at the end of the process is very easy. If you started early with a natural reading habit, building a vocabulary, understanding what effective written communication looks like and sounds like, and you learn how to read and understand what an author is writing. To tell you,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 32:13
these are crazy ideas. Mike, yeah, I know they’re radical, right. Engage

Mike Bergin 32:17
with your math. Here’s another thing. Don’t just decide that you are math, science only, or reading, writing only, embrace it all, especially because you want to be able to pivot, as Lisa has suggested, right the choices that you make in high school or during the college application process are not lifelong commitments. You can change your mind, and you want to be ready for that so you can start early, and just keep in mind that authenticity has to manifest academically as well, right? You cannot write down that you are dying, dying to study science when you skipped all the honors and AP opportunities at your disposal, right? You came to it late. There’s a story there, but it’s a much easier story to tell if you really follow your interests early.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 33:06
I you know Mike, when you were sharing that what came to mind is really about mindset, right? So I it makes me think of a kid, Brady, who was in our course. He always told himself he was bad at math because something that his junior high math teacher told him, and when we got his interest inventory, his numerical score was high, and he was like, what I’m but I’m bad at math, and so we had these conversations. Do you know that the Brady changed his mindset because of an interest inventory, he ended up really like tapping in the next year, he upped it to honors math, and actually decided to slow down a little bit on English, and now he’s headed in a totally different direction because he changed his mindset.

Mike Bergin 33:53
Yeah, it’s great and right. And I mean, you know, I don’t have words that I can share in this context for teachers that limit students, dreams, ambitions or ability, but just like students find that out by trying, you know everything that you both shared about getting out into the real world and trying, it is critical to making these decisions and finding a path. I know that we could talk about this piece all day. But I want to move to another which is to discuss kind of the central one of the central aspects of this webinar is to talk about some very important and popular majors and some specific scholarships associated with each and Lisa and Dave collaborated to put together a really beautiful list. And Lisa, I’m going to ask you to start by just talking about the majors that you’re focusing on,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:49
yeah, and I want to say everybody that’s on we’re going to drop after we finish talking about this a PDF in the chat, and we’ll also email it to you tomorrow. But. It lists these scholarships that Dave unearth that’s related to the most pop, six, most popular majors that I want to talk about today. So we’re going to, we’re going to give that to you guys so that you actually physically have it, right? But the six, I’ll just quickly run down what the six are, but then explain how this works, right? So computer science, nobody’s surprised by that. I am sure business psychology, this one might surprise you. Music, performance, engineering and nursing. Okay, so those are your six. Now, why those six? Some of them like computer science and business. They’re just super popular. They’re among the most popular majors in the United States, and there’s so many kids that want to get into that major that a college, a university, could enroll multiple freshman classes every single year with kids in that major. From a running your university standpoint, that’s you can’t do that operationally. Kids need to be able to get in, get the classes, they need to get out in time. And we’re sitting here talking about scholarships. Scholarships last for four years if they’re renewable scholarships, right? Dave, correct. So this on time graduation idea is very, very important, and there are some majors in this one’s not on the list, but like teaching, if you don’t start out as an education major, the odds that you’re going to get out of school in four years are very slim. It’s very, very difficult to do. And if you’re adding summer school, you’re going to have to pay for that summer school, right? So you’ve got things like computer science, business, psychology, popular, popular, popular, then you go to music, and it’s interesting. In some schools, it vary a little bit, like I was talking to the University of Arkansas last week at the NAT cat college fair. And for them, it’s architecture. Well, why? Because there’s studio space associated with these creative majors you might at Arkansas, they’ve got, like every Architecture major has their own beautiful studio. If you are a musical performance major, you’ve got to have studio time to go in and practice. They have, they only have so many rooms that they can have on campus. So that’s why you see things like music performance and sometimes impacted majors also could be related to lab space, right? Engineering, again, super, super popular. A lot of people think they want to be an engineer because they’re good at math and physics and they know that they can earn a good living. But I can tell you from a personality DNA that is not what makes a happy engineer. There are lots of people that are very good at those two subjects that are miserable being engineers. And I’m sure every adult on here can name some, right? So it’s about that’s why we really need to not only research from behind a computer sitting here researching, but we need to go out and get real world experiences to validate. We’re teaching students I work with, teaching students how to validate through real world experiences, then that helps create the narrative. That’s why Dave and I love working together so much. Those experiences help them craft their personal narrative that supports the applications for the scholarships and the colleges, and finally, nursing. Nursing has labs involved. Nursing also has field experiences for which, and this is a problem sometimes even with education, for which, you need to have somebody at the university who’s in charge of making sure that you’re doing okay in your labs or in your field experiences. So when there’s field experiences and oversight like that with like teaching and nursing, that can be a problem. When I went to the NAT CAC Fair last week, every college that I talked to, I said, Do you have any majors that are capped? And they all would name some. Universally, every single college I talked to said nursing. Not a single one didn’t say nursing. And then they all had other things to add. Well, for our school, computer science, for our school, architecture, for our school, you know, whatever, but nursing, that’s it’s a tough nut to

Mike Bergin 39:16
crack. It is one of the hottest majors out there. Yeah, and we

Lisa Marker-Robbins 39:20
desperately need nurses. That’s right? Like there’s the friction, right? We desperately need great nurses. And yet these are capacity. Is a capacity cap major at every school and at many schools, Engineering, Computer Science and Nursing. If you don’t apply as a 12th grader, the door is firmly shut. There’s no way to switch into that major later. So Dave take it away on these scholarships because I gave him the majors, and he knows the why behind it, but he’s the one that unearthed these great scholarship opportunities that we’re going to give you.

Dave Peterson 39:52
Yeah, so we’ll start with computer science. We have a big one. It’s called the Regeneron Science Talent scholars. Talent Search scholarship. This one is for high school seniors. It closes November 6, and the prize pool is a quarter of a million dollars. So huge, huge opportunity for computer science majors. When Lisa gave me these majors, we she said, just fine. You know, give give us one, but I like to over deliver, so I’m going to give you two for each one, a second one for computer science majors is called the Zip it, future of connectivity. It’s a smaller scholarship, $2,500 and it’s only open to college students. So I don’t know what the breakdown is of the viewers tonight, whether they’re mostly parents of high schoolers, but for those of you who have students in college, that’s a great one, you know, if you’re if you’re studying computer science,

Mike Bergin 40:43
Dave, before you move on, I think it’s good because you just mentioned that the zip it was for college students, and the Regeneron is for high school, high school students, specifically high school seniors. It’s probably worth pointing out what the deadline for that is, in case anybody is hearing this, and there’s still time to get to work.

Dave Peterson 41:03
Yeah, yep. So the Regeneron is November 6, and then zip it is November 25 and Mike, also a good point that you made, that scholarships are not just for high school seniors. We’ve kind of alluded to the fact that they are open younger than that, believe it or not, elementary school, middle school, but you can continue applying for scholarships in college, most students don’t apply for scholarships, and of those who do, most are only doing it during senior year, and then they get off to college, and it’s it’s something that just goes by the wayside. So highly, highly, highly recommend students continue to apply for scholarships in college,

Mike Bergin 41:38
just essentially a piece of information you have personal experience with

Dave Peterson 41:43
that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we would have had a much larger bill at the end had my son not continue to apply for for scholarships in college. So yeah, it was personal for me. Okay, business, the John Galt solution scholarship for future supply chain leaders. So that is a very specific niche within vision, business, supply chain. This is a $10,000 scholarship. This is again open to college students, and it closes November 30 for students in still in high school, particularly seniors. There’s the US Bank Student Scholarship, which has a $20,000 top prize, and that one closes at the end of October, actually, October 30, so a day before the end of the month. Now that one you don’t have to be a future business major, but it ties in nicely. So some of these scholarships may be open to students of any major, but again, we’re talking about what is the mission of this organization? Well, this is a bank that’s a type of business so that’s why I included it here. Psychology, the junior science and humanities symposiums, a $2,500 scholarship for high school students. So I believe that’s all high school students. I would have made a note, I think to myself, if it wasn’t that one’s open all the way until December 4, so lots of time to work on that. And then the psi chi undergraduate scholarship is a $3,000 scholarship for undergraduate psych high members, and that is the college psychology honor society. So that would, I believe, you probably would have to be a psych major to actually join that honor society. And that’s, that’s not, doesn’t close until, till this summer. So

Lisa Marker-Robbins 43:24
that, hey, Dave, yeah, I was gonna say something like, even if somebody’s on here and they have a 10th grader, I would guess that even these college scholarships, they’re available year after year after year. So save the resource, yes, do a calendar reminder, and then you know whether that’s one year, two year, three years from now apply for the scholarship then, yeah,

Dave Peterson 43:44
absolutely. I mean, this is again, starting early and being intentional. Sure, I’m listing some scholarships that don’t, don’t apply to your freshman today, but like you said, these scholarships, they come around every year. Some scholarships are as often as every month. So when you find a scholarship that you’re not eligible for today, but it seems likely you’ll be eligible for tomorrow. Put it on your list. Absolutely great point. Lisa, music performance, all right, there’s a really cool one called the Glenn Miller birthplace society scholarship. This one’s for high school seniors and college freshmen. So kind of a odd narrow window. It’s not open right now, but I included it because I’ve interviewed the sponsor on my podcast a few times. And what’s cool about it is that there’s not only this, this scholarship prize, but the student gets to go to the Glenn Miller birthplace, which he was a famous big band musician back in pre World War Two, World War Two era, you go to his birthplace, and you actually get to perform there at a concert that they hold. So that’s that would be a lot of fun for, you know, kid who’s going into music performance, and then the DAR the Daughters of the American Revolution. Now this is one that almost everybody should listen up for, because. It’s not just music majors. This is a scholarship that it’s actually a pool of scholarships that has, I think, close to 100 unique scholarships within it. Everybody applies to the same application. They have one specifically for for future music majors. But my son actually won a scholarship through the DAR because they have one for students going into history that was his his major. So this one will be opening November 1. Students, like I said, you apply for multiple scholarships through a single application. Pro tip, if you find those types of scholarships, absolutely do those, because it’s, you know, like two for one, or in this case, 100 for one, even though you won’t qualify for all of them. All right, in the interest of time, let me go a little more quickly engineering, the Amazon future engineer scholarships, a $40,000 scholarship, you do have to have taken computer science or engineering classes in high school or a dual enrollment program, or currently be enrolled in that type of program that will be opening this fall, if I remember right. It usually opens late October, early November. But like, like Lisa said this one, it’s been around forever, and then a smaller one. And another pro tip, small scholarships get far fewer entries than the big ones. So the scholarships, 360 tuition solution for STEM students, that’s open. I believe it’s open right now. Closes November 8. It’s 1000 bucks. But again, personal experience, my son only won one large scholarship. Everything else was building off these smaller, 1020 $2,500, scholarships, nursing, the Red Cross leaders save lives scholarship. Now you don’t have to be going into healthcare to participate in this one, but we talked about things like fit to Major. This is a great example of that. So what the student does is they actually organize a blood drive at their school in one of two windows, either during the winter break window or summer break coming back into school window, perfect for students going into nursing or really any other healthcare care field, because not only could you earn the scholarship, but even if you don’t, this is something to talk about in your scholarship essays and your forms, because it demonstrates this interest in healthcare right now, somebody asked A question earlier about scholarships not related to their major. This is a great one for them too, because this shows entrepreneurship, right? You’re organizing a blood drive. It shows that you care about the community. So, you know, yes, you want to focus your scholarship search, but you can also kind of think outside the box a little bit. Last one for nursing hope for tomorrow. Medical scholarship. This is a $5,000 scholarship for current college students from sophomore to senior year of college. So college freshmen are not eligible, and that one closes November 8. So lots, lots of actionable scholarships that people, people can start applying for right now. And obviously those are, that’s just a very short list of what’s out there.

Mike Bergin 48:04
That’s a short list off the top of your head. Some of our attendees are wondering, if you know any scholarships for accounting or history majors?

Dave Peterson 48:12
Oh, there definitely are for accounting. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, history, absolutely, because that was my son’s jam. Well, I mentioned the VFW, not exactly history related, but civics probably would apply the DAR Daughters of the American Revolution. One of those roughly 100 scholarships in that pool is specifically for future history majors. So that’s definitely one. Those are the two come off the top of my head.

Mike Bergin 48:39
Fantastic. Another question that came up was that was wondering, and this is open to either of you, it’s a financial aid question, so it may be outside of the scope of the expertise that you’re willing to share if you’re just pursuing merit based financial aid and scholarships. Should you still file the FAFSA

Dave Peterson 49:06
real quickly? I have a blog post coming out about this tomorrow. I teed it up for October 1, when FAFSA was supposed to open, which miracle upon miracles that opened a few days early this year? Yes, everybody should fill out the FAFSA even if you are 100% sure that you are not going to get need based aid. The blog article goes into more reasons, but the biggest reason is that some colleges require the FAFSA to be filled out to even consider a student for merit scholarships. So you don’t want to close that door. Now there are some other good reasons, like you might need a student loan, and federal student loans are the the cheapest, cheapest loans you can get. They’re not the only loans, but you need to fill out the FAFSA to have that door open as well. So

Lisa Marker-Robbins 49:53
you know, I was going to add to that, Dave. What Dave said is, right, some schools will require the FAFSA for you. To get merit based aid. There’s a big 10 school, and I don’t know if this still accurate, so we’re not going to say the name of the school, but for the institutional scholarships, you did not have to have completed the FAFSA, but if you wanted the college specific, and in this case, I was working with a student who was majoring in engineering and the schools, I almost just said its name, really, really good at engineering, and you had to have the FAFSA or you did not. You weren’t qualified for the college major specific scholarships. Fantastic.

Mike Bergin 50:35
Any biology or pre med scholarships coming to mind?

Dave Peterson 50:39
Dave, off the top of my head, know that red clock, Red Cross leaders save lives, would be a great one for either of those, particularly anybody going in health care. Sorry, I always have so many scholarships swimming in my head. It’s sometimes hard to pull them out. But yeah, I mean, both of those majors, there’s, there are a lot of scholarships.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 51:00
I will say, when my 20, now 27 year old, was in college, he was on a full tuition scholarship at the institutional level, and then the engineering school was writing him a check for $2,500 he thought that was his to keep. I said, No, I’m still paying for room and board. Hand it over. But again, this is the this is the role that like having that made the career, and the major clarity made a difference for us.

Mike Bergin 51:30
So now I’m going to ask attendees coming up with very major specific scholarships is not something that even the scholarship coach can do on the fly. There’s a link to no debt college.substack.com, and that’s Dave’s daily scholarship newsletter. And it’s free and highly recommended that people follow it, because he shares not just this small number of scholarships, but every day he’s sharing valuable scholarships, and he is a resource that you can definitely speak to outside of this context for specific scholarship questions I want to ask, if you have other questions, definitely throw them in the chat. I want to bring up some other questions that we received, and one of them has to do with homeschoolers. Is there anything that you would add to the excellent advice that you both shared, if a student is a is a homeschooler?

Dave Peterson 52:30
So I would add a couple things. First of all, in some ways, homeschoolers are at a real advantage with scholarships, because they can incorporate some of these scholarships into their curriculum. So for instance, let’s say there’s one called Stossel in the classroom that’s very economics and current events focused. So whatever their essay prompts are for that year, you can incorporate that into your kids civics and economics lessons or their curriculum, and make that essay, you know, maybe their their course, final or something like that. So that’s, that’s a great advantage that homeschoolers have. Almost every scholarship is open to homeschoolers. I It’s, it’s basically zero. The number of scholarships I’ve seen that say no, homeschoolers can’t apply the one disadvantage, at least in my experience, that I’ve seen, and I actually work with a disproportionate number of homeschoolers, is that a lot of homeschoolers have very similar resumes, so I would encourage homeschoolers to maybe think outside the box. You know, I’m a church going person, so this is not an anti church comment, but every homeschooler I work with, who is a church going family. Their extracurriculars are very church focused, which is fantastic in one respect, but one of the keys with scholarships is you need to differentiate yourself, so maybe think about some things the student could do besides just what they’re doing at church. And again, this is, yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 53:58
well, as I say, You know what? That what we were talking about earlier, like, if you’re passionate about being involved in your church, your faith community, right? Still do that, but not at the expense of everything else. And that’s kind of Mike you had teed up a question earlier, right? It’s along the same thing. It’s about balance, right? And I would say, from my perspective, for homeschoolers, I was thinking advantage and disadvantage, right? So one of the disadvantages is, like my launch Career Clarity, course, not only our families in it, but we partner with schools as well. Well, schools that are serious about this, they get they line up internships and job shadows for their students, and you don’t have that resource. However, you can incorporate and Dave, it was the same thing we have homeschool Co Op that all of their students take our or they have the opportunity to take our course. You can build it into your curriculum. So I think there’s more pluses and minuses for homeschoolers, but I would say it’s all about balance. Balance too.

Mike Bergin 55:01
That’s fantastic. I’ll point out for homeschoolers on the academic side that some of what I discussed about pursuing your interests applies heavily to homeschoolers. A lot of the homeschool students I’ve worked with, they are advanced in many areas that they’re interested in. They really get to chase their bliss. However, understood that homeschoolers have higher standards for testing, not only if they’re applying to test optional schools that might not be as optional for them, but also when they’re applying to certain schools. I’m working with one home school student who started very early, like in ninth grade, because he wants to go to UT, and UT said homeschool students need to submit 1580 SAT scores. So that’s like, you know, find out early what’s required of you if you are not in a classical school environment.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 55:57
Another plug for starting early and creating the space to be intentional.

Mike Bergin 56:00
It’s always, you know, and there’s just so much, like, just, if you’re listening to this, then you’re already in the information acquisition process, and that’s the piece, right? Learn and then implement everything we’re talking about. If you implement that, this will streamline your path. It will make it easier to get where you want to go, or really maybe where you should be going. All right, I think we have time for one more question. What about you know, we were focusing on majors having to do with kind of career based or academic interests, but there are students that are motivated by other aspects of their lives. How would students that you know are travelers or interested in different cultures, or you know just have have exceptional backgrounds? Is there a path for them to pursue scholarships, like some of the ones that we’ve been talking about, or some more relevant to their fit, sure.

Dave Peterson 57:03
Well, I still think that for that personal narrative you having, that that major and Career Clarity really still does give the student a leg up, but certainly talking about these other things that the student is interested in, and we, you know, I brought up the example of, you know, a kid who might like movies. And, you know, finding a scholarship to review a movie there, there is a scholarship. And I wish I could think of the name of it, but it is about, like, where would you like to travel? That was, that’s the essay topic. So, yeah, there are definitely some scholarships available for these, these extra interests that may not be college major and career focused. And like we said earlier, if a scholarship has multiple essays, again, always deferring to the prompt. Talking about some of these extras is fantastic. I’m thinking about a student I worked with a couple years ago. He was actually going into music performance, but he also had a little side business teaching kids, and actually adults as well, how to solve Rubik’s Cubes, like it was a very niche thing, and that that that little business he had, and the awards he won for being a world class Rubik’s Cube solver weaved its way into many essays, and it really made him stand out.

Mike Bergin 58:24
I love that. How about scholarship opportunities for students pursuing trades like automotive or culinary?

Dave Peterson 58:30
There are tons. Home Depot has one that comes to mind right away, the micro. Some micro, something scholars.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 58:40
His, yeah, his, fantastic. Yeah, yep. I think for, for, even for the trades, you got to look beyond just the scholarships. The scholarships are out there. Yeah, I mean for that, but you also need to look, and we, because we say begin with the end in mind. If someone discovers through the process of beginning with the end in mind that they want to go into a trade. There are apprenticeships where you’re earning while you’re learning. There are industry like the hospitality I’m going to get the name wrong, but the hospitality association of the universe, I’m making that name up, but whatever it is, they have scholarships. They do paid training. So there are ways to earn while you learn, and those are often overlooked as well.

Mike Bergin 59:29
I love it. We are pretty much at the end of our time together. Lisa, Dave, can you share any final point?

Dave Peterson 59:38
Well, I do notice in the chat there are a lot of people asking about specific major scholarships for specific majors. One of the things we’ll send out will be a link to a free download that I have of the scholarship search sites that I recommend. It’s not just the link to the sites, but it also gives a little information about what I like about that particular site. So it’s basically. Ly, how and where to find scholarships.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:00:03
I’m also putting in a link to a resource I have. It’s a free resource for everybody. This was the data set that we the data that we gathered, and you can get the same information for any university on how do they admit? What role does major play in admissions, this is really crucial information for you to understand before you just start applying to colleges. Fantastic.

Mike Bergin 1:00:28
And yes, for those who are asking, we will be sending these resources and links out by email. Lisa Marga Robbins, Dave Peterson, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who attended this evening. It was wonderful to have you with us to talk about scholarships and Career Clarity.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:00:46
Thanks everybody. Thank you.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:00:54
If this conversation gave you clarity about how majors and scholarships work together, don’t stop here. Head to flourish, coachingco.com forward slash majors to grab the free resource we discussed in the webinar. It will show you exactly how intended majors play a role in admissions. In the show notes, you’ll also find a link to the scholarships we mentioned that are tied to capped majors. My gratitude goes to Mike Bergen of the test and the rest podcast for his exceptional moderating, and Dave Peterson of scholarship GPS, you’ll find a link in the show notes to learn more about his course. When your student has direction, you’ll save time, money and stress and set them up for success in college and beyond. I’m cheering you on. See you next time you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai