A new scholarships office has officially opened at Cal State Fullerton that will streamline the process of matching students with available scholarships on and off campus, simplify the application, coordinate financial information and ensure that all available scholarships are utilized by students, among other efforts.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place on Nov. 8, but work has already been underway at the new office, coordinated by Associate Director Meghan Paradiso-Alva, who previously worked in the development office on campus.
“I’m passionate about what I do,” she said. “I went to a CSU myself and paid for it all myself. I wasn’t eligible for financial aid but wasn’t receiving help from my parents. I didn’t know that scholarships were something that you could apply for on your own. I think a lot of students have this misconception that scholarships have to be offered to you because you excel in athletics or academia in some way.”
She noted that hundreds of scholarships are available both from the CSUF campus and externally. “We want to connect students with them so that they know they have that option.” Receiving a scholarship can positively affect students’ self-esteem, she said.
“Scholarships do two things for students. Obviously, there’s that financial component. Also, when they win a scholarship, it gives them that just that little push for themselves, saying, ‘Hey, somebody recognized you, somebody believes in you and what you can do.’ ”
Having a physical location in Gordon Hall, across from the financial aid office, has already drawn students who have questions. “We now have a central point where students can come,” Paradiso-Alva said. “We have two dedicated counselors who can sit down with students and talk to them about their scholarship, how it fits in with the rest of their financial aid. We also have a website where we have resources for outside scholarships, so we’re able to point students in the right direction.”
A new streamlined scholarship application will go live this January. “Previously it had over 80 questions,” Paradiso-Alva said. “One of the things we were noticing is that a lot of students were starting the application but not finishing it, which told me that the application was too long, too complicated. So, we took those 80 questions, brought them down to 12.”
Now, with just one application, a student will automatically be matched with all of the scholarships that they qualify for based on the criteria, Paradiso-Alva said. “It’s a lot more accessible for students. We’re all going to be on the same timeline. They’ll apply at the beginning of the year in January, and they’ll be awarded the following summer so that they can use it for their fall term. That’s the goal, to get it on that schedule.”
About 600 scholarships are available to students who are already enrolled in Cal State Fullerton and about 40 are offered during the summer for incoming students.
Internal scholarships are administered by Cal State Fullerton. “The outside scholarships are administered by different private companies, nonprofits, community organizations and community foundations,” Paradiso-Alva said. “We are working to put a lot of resources for those that are vetted on our website. And we will be doing webinars for students with tips and tricks on both applying for on-campus scholarships and off-campus scholarships.”
The application deadline is March 1. Committees made up of faculty members within all departments go through the applications and decide who will be awarded various scholarships. “This works really well because these are the faculty members who know that major. They know what the students are speaking to in their essays, for instance.”
Decisions are typically made by April 1, and students are alerted by June. “They’ll be awarded in mid-July when their payments will start to be due for the fall term,” Paradiso-Alva said.
She credits the director of financial aid, Nick Valdivia, for helping to start the scholarship office as well as Jessica Barco, assistant vice president for student affairs, David Forgues, vice president of student affairs and Elizabeth Zavala-Acevez, associate vice president for student affairs for their support. She’s also been working with consultant Veronica Popovic, who’s developed scholarship offices at Cal State Northridge and San Diego State.
The amount of money awarded for scholarships has jumped dramatically. “Ten years ago we awarded $5 million in scholarships, including on- and off-campus scholarships that we processed for our students,” Paradiso-Alva said. “In the last academic year, we processed over $21 million in scholarships. So, in the last 10 years, it’s gone up over 400%, which is amazing. But it does take a lot more infrastructure to process all of those.”
Approximately 8,000 students at Cal State Fullerton received scholarships in the last year.