Local Scholarships

Seniors, now is the time to be working on submitting your applications for local scholarships!

Local scholarships are great because you are only competing against other WKHS students (for many) and, at most, against other students from Worthington or the Central Ohio area. These scholarships are all among the scholarships we have listed on the WKHS Counselor website and I strongly encourage you to take the time to check them out. To find the scholarship listings on the Counselor website - you can use the logo on the right side of the page or hover over the College/ Career tab and Scholarship Search will appear in the drop-down menu.

Many of the local scholarships have due dates that are just before or after spring break, but there are some with earlier or later deadlines so it is important to pay attention to those details so that you don't miss out on the opportunities. As you read through the scholarships available, look carefully to determine which ones you might be a good candidate for and therefore want to apply to try to receive. Please remember that time flies and many of the scholarships have requirements such as essays or recommendation letters so it is important not to procrastinate and to get your applications completed on time.

Scholarships

College is expensive! It is an investment in your future and finding financial options to help make it realistic to be able to afford to attend such as with additional scholarships is important. I know it can be a time consuming process, but it is worth it.

Most scholarship money does end up coming directly from your colleges, but there are so many other places to look for scholarships and you should consider all of the options to try to help make your college experience even a little more affordable! For example, do your parent's employers (or if you work, your employer) offer scholarships for dependent children? What about your place of worship? If you volunteer for an organization, do they offer scholarships for their student volunteers? There are also countless scholarship search websites where you can complete personalized searches for other qualities and characteristics that would be ideal for you. If you want to see some of these sites, please check out financial aid section (under colleges) on the WKHS Counselors website.

Searching for Scholarships

Seniors, we will be hosting a Senior Seminar on Searching for Scholarships. The workshop will take place on Thursday, January 22nd from 8:15am - 8:35am in Room 201.

This short, 20-minute presentation will be packed with information to help you explore options to be able to maximize your scholarship search process. The ultimate goal is for you to be able to make college as affordable as possible.

We are only offering 1 session of this and so we are asking for students to please RSVP if you plan on attending because space is limited. Here is the link to RSVP.

We look forward to seeing you at the Senior Scholarship Seminar next week!

FAFSA - For me?

Every year there are senior students or their families who question if they should actually fill out the FAFSA since they "know" that they will not qualify for need based aid. And the reality is if you are in that situation it is very tempting to just skip doing the FAFSA, but we would still strongly encourage you to complete it!

Why?

Because the colleges tell us there are lots of reasons that families should fill out the FAFSA no matter what. Here are a few of those reasons:

1. Some colleges award a FAFSA filing grant. (Grants are similar to scholarships in that you don't have to pay them back. So that is free money for filling out the FAFSA.)
2. There are scholarships that will only be considered after a student has completed the FAFSA in order for a student to be eligible for them.
3. Circumstances can change. Having a FAFSA on file allows for the financial aid offices to be able to help students pivot with a faster process if something bad happens such as a parent loses a job and can no longer cover the college costs as anticipated.
4. It allows for students/ families to have the option of taking out student loans if needed. (Which could be just because you don't have the money on hand to pay or because of those changed circumstances mentioned above in #2.)
5. Having a FAFSA on file signals to financial aid offices that the family is interested in aid (need or merit). That tells colleges that this is not a "cost doesn't matter at all" scenario.

The colleges have said repeatedly that they understand that there will be families who fill out the FAFSA and have a high SAI, but just because you never know what now or the future holds, they still recommend you fill it out and therefore, we also recommend you fill it out too.

**Just a reminder, this post is also being shared on the NEW WKHS Counselor blog. This blog site will no longer be active beyond 2025 so you can transition to receive all blog posts emailed directly to you by subscribing to the new blog site.**

CSS Profile

Hopefully you are making good progress on your FAFSA, but I wanted to be sure to remind you that you need to look at your desired colleges closely to see what their financial aid requirements include.

At some of the more competitive colleges - particularly those who cover all of demonstrated need for students, in addition to requiring the FAFSA, many of those colleges will also require that students and families will submit the CSS profile.  The FAFSA helps colleges determine federal aid, but the CSS profile helps colleges determine institutional aid.  The CSS profile typically asks for a lot more detailed information from families than the FAFSA does.  And while the FAFSA is free to complete, there are fees associated with the CSS profile, but fee waivers are also offered.

Usually this is a topic students figure out as they are going through the whole financial aid application process and the CSS profile is just another step in that process, but we wanted to encourage you to double check if your intended colleges are requiring the CSS profile and to watch your deadlines closely so that you don't miss them.

Here is a link to an article about completing the CSS Profile.

As always, feel free to stop and see us if you have any questions about the CSS profile requirements.

Searching for Scholarships Lunch & Learn

Parents of seniors, are you worrying about paying for your son/ daughter's college education? If you answered yes, you're definitely not alone! The Kilbourne Counselors will be hosting the November Lunch & Learn at noon this Friday (November 14th) to talk about searching for scholarships.

We know that the scholarship search process can feel daunting and that some students and families don't even know where to start so our hope is that this short, focused 30 minutes of time together will allow you to get a jump-start on the scholarship search process.

As always, the Lunch & Learn series will be held from 12-12:30 over zoom for interested families to be able to grab their lunch and eat while we talk about that month's topic. The zoom link will be emailed home to parents and posted on the Counselor website on Friday morning.

We look forward to seeing parents online on Friday!

Merit & Need Based Aid

Paying for College is expensive! There is no question that higher education costs add up quickly.

There are two broad categories of financial aid – Merit Based aid and Need Based aid.

Merit Based aid is what you think of when you think “Scholarships.” These are usually awarded to students based on academic achievements, leadership, athletics, special talents such as art or music, volunteerism, or other personal qualities that set you apart. These scholarships do not consider financial need. A significant portion of all merit-based aid comes directly from the college/ university. Some schools may require additional scholarship applications, essays, interviews, and many colleges will have earlier deadlines to be considered for their scholarships. It can be helpful to know that a lot of times the smaller, private colleges will have more money available for scholarships in order to help make attending their school competitive with the lower costs of the public colleges. Please also remember that there are scholarship offerings listed on the Counselor Website. It is important to keep an eye out for unique scholarships that might apply to your personal situation. Maye you would qualify for an Italian heritage scholarship. Perhaps one of your grandparents won a purple heart or maybe you have time to write an essay for one of the other scholarship competitions… no matter what the situation, if you find a scholarship that you meet the criteria for go ahead and apply – you might be pleasantly surprised at the result and if you don’t, the answer is definitely a “no.”

Need Based aid is what you will sometimes hear people refer to as “Financial Aid” even though both Merit Based and Need Based aid technically fall under that overarching category. There are a variety of different Need Based aid programs which will require you to fill out the FAFSA in order to be considered for them and some which may ask for a CSS Profile. Grants are considered gift assistance – they give you money and you do not have to pay it back. Loans which can come from a wide variety of sources – the federal government, the college, and private banks is money that you are required to pay back. Work Study programs are on campus job opportunities that the government helps fund that allows you to earn money for college through working on campus. The big difference between Merit Based and Need Based aid is that Need Based aid is that the type and amount of Need Based aid you will receive depends upon the amount of financial need you have.

And, yes, just to add to the confusion – there are some scholarships that will consider financial need as a criterion. They are still awarding the scholarship based upon some specific aspect of who you are it is just allowing them to narrow down the potential applicant pool.

One last important reminder - NEVER pay to be considered for a scholarship! That is a scam. Don't waste your money!

October 1st

Can you believe it is October 1st?!?  This is a key date for seniors for many reasons...

The FAFSA opens today (October 1st).  The FAFSA is a key component for colleges to be able to provide you with their financial aid offers so that you can consider the financial implications when making the decision about which college will be the best fit financially.  You can access the FAFSA here: https://studentaid.gov/announcements-events/fafsa-support

When students and parents are completing the FAFSA, you will each need to have an FSAID number.  This number will allow you to electronically sign your FAFSA and in the future it would let you sign promissory notes as well as complete future FAFSA's.

The student and parent will each create their own separate numbers.  You cannot use the same e-mail addresses for the creation of the numbers so if you don't have an e-mail address and have been using your parents e-mail in the past then this is the ideal time to create your own e-mail account.

You will make your own challenge questions to help you access your number if you forget it in the future so it is important to write down those challenge questions and answers to make sure you will remember it down the road.  I recommend that students and parents make a folder related to FAFSA where you store all of this information so that you will always have it when you might need it.

If you forget to create an FSAID number prior to completing your FAFSA, it will still have a link for you to be able to go back and create one, but ideally you should create it ahead of time.

Here is a link to create your FSAID: https://studentaid.gov/fsa-id/create-account/launch

To help you with the college financial aid process we will host a Financial Aid Meeting on Monday, October 6th at 7pm via Zoom.  We are fortunate to welcome Faith Phillips, a financial aid director for OSU Newark and COTC, as our guest presenter.  

Why else is October 1st important?  We are now in the 1 month countdown to the November 1st early application deadline for so many colleges.  So you have a month left to finalize your applications.  Additionally, remember, you should be asking for any recommendation letters a month in advance which means TODAY!  So, if you haven't already, please be sure to ask your teacher (or me) about writing a recommendation letter for you this week!

More Scholarships

Last week I posted about Local Scholarships and since then pretty much every senior I have talked to has been by to talk about their financial aid package and/ or asking for more scholarship information to help manage the costs of their college offers.

The reality is that college is expensive! It is an investment and finding financial options to help make it realistic such as with additional scholarships is important. I know that it can be a time consuming process, but it is worth it if it makes your college degree more affordable.

Most scholarship money does end up coming directly from your colleges, but there are so many other places to look for scholarships and you should consider all of the options to try to help make your college experience even a little more affordable! For example, do your parent's employers (or if you work, your employer) offer scholarships for dependent children? What about your place of worship? If you volunteer for an organization, do they offer scholarships for their student volunteers? There are also countless scholarship search websites where you can complete personalized searches for other qualities and characteristics that would be ideal for you. If you want to see some of these sites, please check out financial aid section (under colleges) on the WKHS Counselors website.

Local Scholarships

Seniors, now is the time to be working on submitting your applications for local scholarships!

Local scholarships are great because you are only competing against other WKHS students (for many) and, at most, against other students from Worthington or the Central Ohio area.  These scholarships are all among the scholarships we have listed on the WKHS Counselor website and I strongly encourage you to take the time to check them out.  To find the scholarship listings on the Counselor website - you can use the logo on the right side of the page or hover over the College/ Career tab and Scholarship Search will appear in the drop-down menu.

Many of the local scholarships have due dates of April 1st, but there are some with earlier or later deadlines so it is important to pay attention to those details so that you don't miss out on the opportunities.  As you read through the scholarships available, look carefully to determine which ones you might be a good candidate for and therefore want to apply to try to receive.  Please remember that time flies and many of the scholarships have requirements such as essays or recommendation letters so it is important not to procrastinate and to get your applications completed on time.

FAFSA Reminders

Seniors, for the last month I have been focused on the younger students with their future planning, but as those meetings started winding down last week (and I am SO HAPPY that ALL of my registration meetings are now DONE!!) I started having a chance to touch base with more seniors again. The topic that came up the most was paying for college and how you're going to afford the colleges that you'd like to attend. This is a very stressful part of the process and I am thankful that you are thinking through it all with your families so that you make smart decisions for your future.

One of the important reminders I have for you is to be sure that you have submitted your FAFSA and that your intended colleges have everything that they need to look at you for financial aid consideration.

Here are articles that speak to the FAFSA and financial related issues with college:

Why you should fill out the FAFSA even if you don’t think you’ll qualify

Ohio Colleges Deadline Dates for FAFSA

You got into college.  How will you pay for it?

No loan colleges: What to know

How student loans work

Debunking 5 common myths about paying for college

 

Applying for Scholarships

In addition to the need-based aid aspects of doing the FAFSA, you should also be considering seeking out and applying for any and all scholarships that would apply to you.  I know that some students will find scholarships through AI, some will find them from colleges, and others will find them from scholarship search websites or apps.

If colleges are sending you emails encouraging you to apply for a scholarship on their campus, APPLY!  Too many times students don’t follow through and throw away that opportunity.  Most of the best scholarship money comes to students when you are coming straight out of high school to be a college freshman, so you don’t want to miss out on these opportunities.  Often times these scholarships are renewable which means they help you all 4 years of your college career.  

I encourage you to ask the colleges questions about if they will look at updated information (like testing data) if you get the data before they are reviewing the applications.  Another great question you can ask colleges or read on their websites is what will you be required to complete in order to be able to maintain the scholarship over time.  

There is also value in considering scholarships that are beyond the college.  If you go to the Searching for Scholarships page on the Counselor website you will find lots of websites you can use for searches.  I also encourage you to make sure you check to see if there are any Franklin County Alumni Association scholarships offered for the colleges you are considering.  You should also think about organizations that you or your family are involved with – service groups, community organizations, religious groups, parent businesses, etc. On the WKHS Counselor searching for scholarship page there is also a sample tool that you can use to help keep your scholarship applications organized and that has been particularly useful to students in the past.

The reality is that college is expensive, but you CAN and SHOULD take steps now to help mitigate as much of the cost as you can.

Financial Aid Deadlines

As students give a sigh of relief for each college application that is submitted, it is easy to think to yourself: "Application, Essay, Rec Letters, Transcript, Test Scores all submitted means that I am done!" And you are done with the application process.  But if you care about how you are going to pay for college then you are not done at all.

Financial Aid and the financial resources to help students pay for college is an important aspect of the college application process for students.  One of the challenges related to financial aid is that much like college admissions deadline dates, each college gets to establish the dates by which they would like to receive student's applications for financial aid (FAFSA and sometimes also CSS profile).  The priority deadline date is the day you would want to be sure they have your required forms completed by in order to put yourself in the position to get the maximum possible aid.  The colleges, as a whole, will continue to give out whatever available money they still have left over for those who submit their applications for financial aid later, but you are potentially dealing with less money being available.

So you will want to check each college's website and look at the portion of their website related to costs and aid and see what their priority deadline date is and be sure that you submit ALL of your required paperwork to them ahead of that deadline.

Net Price Calculator

This is actually a reminder for students in EVERY grade level... 

Every college features a net price calculator on their website. This requirement was established in an effort to help provide students and parents with the information needed to make more informed decisions and choices about what they can expect to pay for a college education at each school. 

Now, I will forewarn you that not every net price calculator is the same and some are more detailed than others. Why does this matter? Well, if it is very specific and takes all of the different factors into consideration that the financial aid office will be looking at when creating your financial aid package, then you are likely to get a better picture of what your estimated aid might be, but if it is a more simplistic calculator then there could be more variance when compared to your actual aid package.  Plus, of course, the accuracy of the information that you submit will determine the accuracy of the information that you receive back.

Without a doubt, college is very expensive and so trying to figure out which colleges will be financially reasonable/ realistic is an important factor to consider in your college search and selection process. I hope that this tool will be useful to you as you investigate schools.

Merit vs Need Based Aid

In honor of the FAFSA being open and because today I talked to a few students about scholarships and financial aid - one who was thankful to be done with the CSS profile and another who spends 1 hour per week applying to various scholarships - I decided that this week I will try to let topics related to paying for college be our over-arching theme.

Paying for college is expensive! There is no question that higher education costs add up quickly.  There are two broad categories that come into play when we are talking about financial aid – Merit Based aid and Need Based aid.

Merit Based aid is what you think of when you think “Scholarships.” These are usually awarded to students based on academic achievements, leadership, athletics, special talents such as art or music, volunteerism, or other personal qualities that set you apart. These scholarships do not consider financial need. A significant portion of all merit-based aid comes directly from the college/ university. Some schools may require additional scholarship applications, essays, interviews, and many colleges will have earlier deadlines to be considered for their scholarships. It can be helpful to know that a lot of times the smaller, private colleges will have more money available for scholarships in order to help make attending their school competitive with the lower sticker prices of the public colleges. It is helpful to keep an eye out for unique scholarships that might apply to your personal situation. Last year I had a student who was able to qualify for an Italian heritage scholarship. Perhaps one of your grandparents won a purple heart or maybe you have time to write an essay for one of the other scholarship competitions… no matter what the situation, if you find a scholarship that you meet the criteria for go ahead and apply – you might be pleasantly surprised at the result and if you don’t, the answer is definitely a “no.”

Need Based aid is what you will sometimes hear people refer to as “Financial Aid” even though both Merit Based and Need Based aid technically fall under that one category. There are a variety of different Need Based aid programs which will require you to fill out the FAFSA (and/or CSS profile) in order to be considered for them. Grants are considered gift assistance – they give you money and you do not have to pay it back. Loans which can come from a wide variety of sources – the federal government, the college, and private banks is money that you are required to pay back. Work Study programs are on campus job opportunities that the government helps find that allows you to earn money for college through working on campus. 

The big difference between Merit Based and Need Based aid is that with Need Based aid is that the type and amount of Need Based aid you will receive depends upon the level of financial need you have.  And, yes, just to add to the confusion – there are some scholarships that will consider financial need as a criterion. They are still awarding the scholarship based upon some specific aspect of who you are it is just allowing them to narrow down the potential applicant pool.

Try not to get frustrated as you walk through the whole financial aid process.  Just take it one step at a a time and remember that all of these applications ultimately will help you to make college more affordable.

FAFSA Open NOW!

In a surprising turn of events, the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) which was not supposed to open until December 1st has been fully released early and is now available for students and parents to complete and submit.

A few reminders:

1. This is a FREE application.  You do not need, nor should you, pay for someone to complete the FAFSA for you.

2. The link to complete the FAFSA is: https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa and you will be filling out the version for 2025-26.

3. Each student and parent will require their own FSA ID in order to sign the and submit the FAFSA application.  Here is the link to request your FSA ID: https://studentaid.gov/fsa-id/create-account/launch

4. Every college will have their own financial aid deadlines when they will ask for you to have your FAFSA submitted.  Submitting your information in a timely manner and ahead of the deadlines is your best way to make sure you have a chance to be considered for all of the financial help that you might qualify for from the colleges.

5. There are a lot of students and families who "know" that they won't qualify for money through the FAFSA and you may wonder why we say you should still fill out the FAFSA.  The reason is that there are some scholarships at various colleges that are only considered after need based aid has been distributed.  If you haven't completed the FAFSA to determine what, if any, need based aid you would qualify for then they can't look at you for those other merit based scholarships.  So it can be helpful to fill it out for that reason.  Additionally, even if you don't qualify for grants, filling out the FAFSA will make it possible for you to be able to decide if you want to take out federal student loans to help pay for your college costs.

6. It will take you about an hour to fill out the FAFSA.  So just relax, be patient and take it step by step.  You can totally do this and it will feel so good to have it done and out of the way!

CSS Profile

Thanks to everyone who came to the Financial Aid presentation tonight.  In addition to the FAFSA which opens up on December 1st, I wanted to be sure to remind you that you need to look at your desired colleges closely to see what their financial aid requirements include.

At some of the more competitive colleges - particularly those who cover all of demonstrated need for students, in addition to requiring the FAFSA, many of those colleges will also require that students and families will submit the CSS profile.  The FAFSA helps colleges determine federal aid, but the CSS profile helps colleges determine institutional aid.  The CSS profile typically asks for a lot more detailed information from families than the FAFSA does.  And while the FAFSA is free to complete, there are fees associated with the CSS profile, but fee waivers are available to students who qualify and are on free/ reduced lunch.

Usually this is a topic students figure out as they are going through the whole financial aid application process and the CSS profile is just another step in that process, but with the timing of the FAFSA being delayed, I realized that the CSS profile dates and timing haven't changed and so I wanted to encourage you to double check if your intended colleges are requiring the CSS profile and to watch your deadlines closely so that you don't miss them while waiting for the FAFSA to be released.

FSA ID

First, a quick reminder that tomorrow night is our Financial Aid Presentation at 7pm in the WKHS Auditorium.

When students and parents are completing the FAFSA, you will each need to have an FSA ID number.  This number will allow you to electronically sign your FAFSA and in the future it would let you sign promissory notes as well as complete future FAFSA's.

The student and parents will each create their own separate numbers.  You cannot use the same e-mail addresses for the creation of the FSA ID so if you don't have an e-mail address and have been using your parents e-mail in the past then this is the ideal time to create your own e-mail account.

You will make your own challenge questions to help you access your number if you forget it in the future so it is important to write down those challenge questions and answers to make sure you will remember it down the road.  I recommend that students and parents make a folder related to FAFSA where you store all of this information so that you will always have it when you might need it.

Here is a link to create your FSAID numbers: https://studentaid.gov/fsa-id/create-account/launch

Financial Aid Night

Seniors, you and your parents have probably already heard that the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) will release for you to begin completing on December 1st.

To help you with the college financial aid process we will have a Financial Aid Meeting coming up, one week from today, on Thursday, November 14th at 7:00pm in the WKHS Auditorium.  We are fortunate enough to have Faith Phillips, a financial aid director for OSU Newark and COTC, sharing her expertise with our parents and students.  She always has useful insight and is able to present it in engaging ways that will help you in completing your financial aid application.  

Because the FAFSA has so many new aspects and tends to create a lot of questions, this is likely an important night for senior families - even if you have older siblings who have been through the FAFSA process before.  I hope you will make plans to join us on November 14th!

CSS Profile

We are still more than a month away from the FAFSA being released for this year, but I wanted to be sure to remind you that you need to look at your desired colleges closely to see what their financial aid requirements include.

At some of the more competitive colleges - particularly those who cover all of demonstrated need for students, in addition to requiring the FAFSA, many of those colleges will also require that students and families will submit the CSS profile.  The FAFSA helps colleges determine federal aid, but the CSS profile helps colleges determine institutional aid.  The CSS profile typically asks for a lot more detailed information from families than the FAFSA does.  And while the FAFSA is free to complete, there are fees associated with the CSS profile, but fee waivers are also offered.

Usually this is a topic students figure out as they are going through the whole financial aid application process and the CSS profile is just another step in that process, but with the timing of the FAFSA being delayed, I realized that the CSS profile dates and timing haven't changed and so I wanted to encourage you to double check if your intended colleges are requiring the CSS profile and to watch your deadlines closely so that you don't miss them while waiting for the FAFSA to be released.

Here is a link to an article about completing the CSS Profile.

As always, feel free to stop and see me if you have any questions about the CSS profile requirements.