California Cash 4 College

If it’s January, it must be time to apply for financial aid and attend Cash for College workshops to get help.  Many of you are Cash for College workshop organizers – THANK YOU! For those of you who are not, here are some updates:

1)      Cash for College workshop information can be found online at: http://calgrants.org/index.cfm?navId=16&

2)      Schedule of workshops happening in the College OPTIONS service area (Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama and Trinity) is attached – remember ANY high school senior (and/or parent) can attend ANY workshop.  Hard copies of the attachment are being delivered/sent to all high schools in those five counties for distribution to seniors.

3)      Scholarships have changed a bit

a.       Cash for College workshop scholarships: There will no longer be one $1,000 scholarship/qualifying workshop. Now there will be FIVE $2,000 scholarships for our 11 county region. To be eligible for consideration for one of the five $2,000 scholarships, students must:

                                                               i.       Participate in a Cash For College workshop

                                                             ii.      Complete the online exit survey at the workshop

                                                            iii.      Complete the FAFSA or Dream Act application for 2015-16

                                                           iv.      Meet Cal Grant eligibility requirements

b.      New: ONE $1,500 scholarship will be offered to students to download the upcoming free Cash for College app (available soon) and attend a workshop

c.       Chegg, textbook discounter, will will provide students who participate in a Cash For College workshop with a 10% textbook discounter plus FREE shipping for the textbook.  Details here: www.chegg.com

Cash for College PowerPoint presentation: (attached) College OPTIONS will be using this at our local Cash for College workshops.  It’s takes me about 25 minutes to run through it (and I’m not reading the notes word for word), but we feel strongly that since some students/parents might not have attended a fall financial aid information night that it’s important to reiterate some financial aid basics prior to jumping into the computer lab. Plus it covers some common mistakes people make on the FAFSA/CA DREAM application as well as what happens after the application is submitted. Feel free to edit/use as you like.  (And for people outside of the College OPTIONS service area, other than the reference to the new online scholarship application – slide 8, feel free to leave in the references to the College OPTIONS website as a resource for people.)