By Nicole Haley
Erin Burns and Joshua Good filled out the same simple one page form from student financial services and got back $5,000 between the two of them. For several Northeastern students struggling to pay tuition, scholarships are essential but not always so easy to find.
Burns and Good were recipients of the George L. Barnes Scholarship, one of about 15 scholarships that have been given to Northeastern undergraduate students since the beginning of June in a program called “Scholarship of the Week”.
Deciding they needed a better way to inform students about specialized scholarships, Richard Doyon and Mike Wildeman of student financial services started sending weekly emails to Northeastern students and faculty detailing a different scholarship each week.
These scholarships are part of the 621 endowed scholarship funds sponsored by alumni and other friends of Northeastern. Doyon said not enough students are aware of the endowed scholarship process, which allows students to fill a general form which financial aid counselors look at to match students with specific scholarships for which they may qualify. Some of the scholarships are very particular, the general form does not always provide enough information to let the office know whether or not a certain student qualifies.
“Donors often put specific criteria and it can be hard to match up students with scholarships that are so narrowly defined,” Doyon said.
Doyon and Wildeman devised the scholarship of the week program as a way of making students aware of this money and letting those who qualify come to them. Doyon said that so far they have been able to award students approximately 50 to 60 thousand dollars this way. According to Doyon, each scholarship usually provides a minimum of $1,000. The number of students that receive each scholarship varies.
Most of the scholarships offered through this program require students to be from a certain area or have a particular major. The Barnes Scholarship was available to 10 Northeastern students who displayed financial need and were permanent residents of the South Shore. It was open to all majors.
Burns, who received $3,000 from the Barnes Scholarship, said she was pleasantly surprised to find the extra funding on her award letter.
“I think some of the scholarships can be broad, but when you find one it’s great,” Burns said.
As a winner of this scholarship, Good noted that many university scholarships are available only to a small percentage of students displaying the highest academic excellence and are not always attainable for the wider student population.
“These scholarships give money to a larger span of people,” Good said.
Some of the scholarships have more than one specific qualification and therefore may not apply to a great number of students. This week’s scholarship, for example, is for freshmen engineering majors who are reside in or went to school in particular towns in New Hampshire. However, as Doyon pointed out, this also means there is less competition for these funds and the students who do fit the qualifications for the scholarships may be able to renew them.
Temporarily the scholarships of the week are not being sent directly to student email accounts due to complications with the new “myNEU” system. Students may view the scholarships on Northeastern’s self-service page under campus announcements.
