One of College Success Foundation’s top priorities is helping students from low-income backgrounds overcome financial barriers to education. In addition to helping students access financial aid (such as grants and loans), CSF provides scholarship opportunities for students who demonstrate academic promise and financial need. We also administer scholarships on behalf of other organizations, such as Costco and the BECU Foundation.
Every fall, hundreds of students from across Washington state apply for these scholarships, and just a fraction of those applicants will be selected to receive them. So, how does CSF decide which applicants rise to the top? With a little — or a lot of — help from dozens of volunteers, who read, evaluate and score each application over a two-week period each spring.
During these events, volunteers score applications for four scholarships. These include CSF’s key scholarship programs, the Leadership 1000 Scholarship and Governors’ Scholarship for Foster Youth, as well as the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship and BECU Foundation Scholarship. To identify the students whose achievements and potential set them apart, CSF provides thorough guidance to volunteers so they can evaluate applications in a fair, neutral and consistent way. Each volunteer participates in mandatory training and receives a detailed matrix to help them make objective decisions as they read through students’ personal experiences.
Some volunteers are CSF team members, but the vast majority come from outside the organization. Jens Madsen of Brighton-Jones has volunteered to score applications for the past three years. For Jens, reading scholarship applications goes beyond the usual volunteer opportunity — it has changed his outlook on what students from low-income backgrounds experience. “I grew up in Denmark, and my lived experience was vastly different than here in the U.S.,” says Jens. “It has expanded my own perspective on what going to college means for a lot of people in this country, and how hard you have to work when you’re not from a family that has a history of going to college.”
One of the characteristics reviewers look for in applicants is academic promise. But that doesn’t just mean good grades; reviewers look for things like academic growth and improvement over time, especially in subjects related to the student’s intended field of study in college and career goals. Reviewers also consider non-academic criteria, such as students’ ability to set goals and take concrete steps to achieve them, realistically evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses, and develop solutions to problems rather than giving up (or relying on others to solve them). Students must also submit letters of recommendation from adult supporters such as teachers, coaches or advisors, which provide additional perspective on each student’s background and potential.
Once all the scores are in, CSF’s scholarship team tackles the next step: sifting through the numbers to determine who will move forward in the process. Selected applicants receive offers, and if they accept, they attend an orientation. In some cases, students even have the opportunity to meet up with the donor who’s funding the scholarship they received.
Scholarships are life-changing for the students who receive them, but volunteering to score scholarship applications can be life-changing as well. “It’s a great way to hear directly from students CSF serves and to understand what it’s like to be a low-income student navigating public education,” says Maria Rebecchi, director of scholarships and financial aid for CSF. “It’s a great reminder of why we do what we do.”
Jens agrees. “I have deep respect and admiration for the commitment and determination these students have. They’ve overcome a lot of barriers in their pursuit of an education,” he says. “It’s an honor to be a reader. It’s more of a gift to me than it is to them because it broadens my horizons so much. It has changed me for the better.”
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