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[00:00:00] Welcome to the MEFA Pathway Learning Series. My name is Apelila Joseph, and I am the MEFA Pathway Program Manager. MEFA is a state authority created in 1982 to help families plan, save, and pay for college, and prepare for post-secondary success. As an extension of all the great resources nefa provides, MEFA Pathway is a no cost comprehensive college and career planning web portal for students in grade six through 12.

Our goal is to help you become familiar with the tools and features MEFA Pathway has to offer in support of post-secondary readiness and success. Let’s get started. Today, we scholarship resources. So I am going to [00:01:00] log into my MEFA Pathway account. I’m gonna click on, I’m a student for first time users.

You can register for a new MEFA Pathway account by clicking register here. Uh, if you already have a MEFA Pathway account, but you can remember your password or your username, you can simply click forgot password or forgot username, uh, to reset your account. And for schools that utilize Clever and have MEFA Pathway enabled, uh, for Clever, you can click log in with Clever.

So I’m gonna go ahead and log into my test account. And today we are going to explore, uh, how to search for scholarships with MEFA Pathway. When students first log into MEFA Pathway, they are brought directly to their dashboard. Their dashboard has some helpful to-dos for students, um, as well as a little activity meter.

So this is a helpful [00:02:00] way to move students through the platform and sort of point them in the right direction in terms of what activity they should complete next. Uh, one thing that I’ll also highlight. Um, on MEA Pathways dashboard, we have a featured scholarship and this is something that gets updated every month.

Um, so as sort of just an easy way for students to sort of find and have a scholarship to apply for, they can log directly into their MEA pathway account and just take a look at their dashboard.

So I am going to navigate.

So if students click on the Pay for College tab, they are brought directly to some of the scholarship resources. So MEFA Pathway has a great scholarship search tool, which I’m gonna launch right now. And so this is especially helpful because there are [00:03:00] two really nice ways that students can utilize for Pathway scholarship search.

Uh, the first is with our national scholarship search, and that utilizes the Peterson’s database of scholarships. The other way is through a local scholarships tool, uh, which I’ll talk more about in just a moment. Uh, so students can, are met with this quick little popup, um, where they can quickly add in some filters to search for scholarships, or if they don’t want to utilize this, they can just click the x.

It will bring them directly to the scholarship search. So again, students can search by scholarship type, either through the national scholarship search or through the local scholarship search. So for today, we’re gonna start with the national scholarship search. Again, this utilizes the Peterson’s database.

Uh, and so there are, as you can see, over 5,000 scholarship results that are. So I would strongly [00:04:00] recommend that students take advantage of the filter options. On the left hand side, there are tons of different ways students can filter, uh, the scholarship search. Uh, one way is if students have a particular area of study in mind, maybe they know they are gonna, you know, go to school to be an engineer.

Um, this is something that they can add in as a filter. So I’m gonna select engineering slash technology as my first filter. And so that significantly narrowed down the scholarship list. But as you can see, there are still 450 search results. Students can also search by a state of residency, a state where they plan on studying ethnicity if they’re looking at a particular type of school.

So maybe they’re planning on going to a four year college. They can add that in as a search filter. And so what you’ll begin to see is a nice [00:05:00] list of scholarships. So students can click on any one scholarship,

and what it will do is it’ll launch the scholarship information card. And so from here, students are able to see the amount of the scholarship, the award type, if it’s renewable. How many scholarships are available, as well as the deadline. They can also scroll down to see a scholarship description, um, the eligibility for the scholarship, and then how they can apply.

Uh, it also will show more scholarships like this, so it’s a nice way for students to be able to jump to look at additional scholarships that relate to sort of what they’re searching for. It is completely on the scholarship organization to update the data with their data within the Peterson’s database.

So it’s not something [00:06:00] that, uh, the MEFA Pathway team manages. It’s completely managed, uh, through Peterson’s and whether or not the scholarship providers are updating their information. Students come across a scholarship of interest to them, they can simply click save and that will save the scholarship to their list.

Students can continue to browse through the search results, and I’m just gonna go back to the search results and so they can, you know, look for scholarships this way. Equal Opportunity Scholarship. Uh, students can read more about it, read the full description, if there’s any eligibility requirements, and.

Another great [00:07:00] scholarship resource is a local scholarships tool. This is something that really a school, so if a student school is one of nefa Pathways participating schools, they have access to our local scholarship feature. And so what this essentially is, is as a school gets any local scholarships into their guidance office.

They can upload them into Meet the Pathway. And so it’s a great way, uh, to have one sort of centralized database for all of the local scholarship schools are getting in. Um, and so students are able to browse through the local scholarships. Again, this is dependent on your school setting up.

I look at scholarships, learn more about it. If there’s a particular scholarship amount, if it’s a grant or a scholarship, how many are available, the [00:08:00] deadline, whether or not it’s renewable. Um, and then any description or eligibility information is listed. Oftentimes schools are listing, um, you know, the website URL, to access the full scholarship application if there’s a particular contact for the scholarship.

All of that information is typically listed in, uh, the listing. So again, this is a great resource, but it’s entirely dependent on a school listing. All of the required information, and I’ll just show another one. Arts for Life. Um, again, this is my test account, so these aren’t. Necessarily real scholarships.

Um, but it’s just here to give you an idea. Um, so the information for the scholarship, the website, and then another great resource is if oftentimes, you know, when schools get scholarships into the guidance office. They might be a paper application, [00:09:00] so a school can add an attachment to a local scholarship listing, so students are able to access the attachment directly from the scholarship listing.

They can sort of print it out on their own time and complete the application and submit it to the appropriate, uh, scholarship vendor. So I have this one saved my list already. The next really great feature within MEFA Pathway to support the overall scholarship search is my scholarship list. So here is a list of any scholarships that students were browsing that were of interest to them.

If they saved the scholarship to their list, it’ll appear here. This is a great tool to help students stay organized when it comes to the scholarship search. They’re able to the deadline for their particular scholarship and they can also update the status. So I, as I was going through the exercise, I added a couple [00:10:00] scholarships.

So I am just gonna update my status. These are all scholarships that I’m interested in applying for. It’s a nice way for students to stay organized. And you can also see the award amount. So. In the case of this, uh, first one, the $1,000 Juno’s, no essay scholarship. I said I have applied. Maybe I know the award amount is exactly a thousand dollars.

So I can update that there. If I were to be awarded the scholarship, I can also update my Status to received award. And this is helpful to keep students organized and for them to keep track of scholarships. Applying to college is one sort of process in and of itself, but helping students stay organized, uh, to apply for scholarships on a continuous basis throughout the year, um, is another, you know, challenging process as well.[00:11:00]

And so the, my scholarship list within MEFA Pathway is a great resource for students to use to try to stay organized in this process. Uh, so that just about wraps up, uh, the MEFA Pathway Scholarship resources. Uh, be sure to join us next time, uh, for other great MEFA Pathway tools. Thank you for attending.

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