|
**Media
Personnel: Some fascinating statistics from various studies can be
found on the "links" page.
College
Students Resort to Cyber-Begging to Pay for College, Trying to
Avoid Credit Card Debt
Woodland,
CA/September 21, 2003-- Paying for college has never been easy, but these
days it can seem nearly impossible. Many students don't qualify
for financial aid, and when they do--it's often too little, too
late.
When
a student does qualify for financial aid, he or she often does not
receive any money until well into the quarter or semester. But,
the student is expected to somehow buy textbooks, pay tuition and attend
full-time while waiting weeks or even months to get their first dime of
financial aid, including student loan money.
And
when the financial aid finally does come, it is often barely enough to
pay for tuition and books, yet the student is expected to take on a full
load of credits to keep his or her financial aid. Colleges and the
government impose maximum limits on grants and loans, but this maximum
is not nearly enough.
A
full time student is normally expected to take at least 12 units.
Twelve units requires 12 hours in the classroom each week. To get
C's, a student is expected to study at least two hours for every one
hour in class. So, just to get a C average, a student will have to
spend at least 36 hours each week on his or her studies. To get
A's or B's, many more hours of studying are necessary.
So,
when is this student supposed to work so he or she can pay the rent and
buy food? Unfortunately, in order to get their education, students
often end up resorting to credit cards.
Recently,
students began trying something new
in order to be able to get that college degree without resorting to
credit cards--asking for help on a new
"sophisticated cyber-begging" website, which aims to connect
individual students with individual sponsors.
The
site, StarvingStudentScholarships.org, was created by Karen Kelly, a
"starving" first-year law school student who, ironically, used
her credit card to get the site up and running.
"I
was getting pretty desperate and was thinking about creating one of
those begging websites. But, I didn't want to be lumped in with
sites like guys who ask for money to buy beer with. I wanted
something more sophisticated, and I really believed that there were
people out there who would be willing to help a hard-working
student. I was still feeling too selfish, though, and then one
night a thought popped into my head--make the site available for all
students who are struggling just like me."
Students
are only asked to donate $1 to create their ad, to help keep the site
running. Student ads then remain active until the student
graduates or pays off education-related debts.
Students
are allowed to place PayPal donation buttons in their ads, where
sponsors can choose to donate as little as $1 to help the student with
his or her education. Sponsors are allowed to browse the student
ads for free. All sponsor donations go directly to the student,
with no fees charged by Starving Student Scholarships (although
donations are always welcome).
How do sponsors
know the ads are really starving students? On the Tips for Sponsor
page, Ms. Kelly advises potential sponsors to donate to students who
have college email addresses, or to students the sponsor knows
personally.
Sponsors
can search the student ads by logging on to http://www.StarvingStudentScholarships.org.
Ads can be searched by student name, school, city, state and even
country.
###
Contact:
Karen Kelly
PO
Box 8133
Woodland,
CA 95776
530-406-1324
(home)
(I
screen my calls, so please identify yourself.)
karen@StarvingStudentScholarships.org
|
