@DasaniH20 Hahaha Lol.
@DasaniH20 The 50 selected today were in addition to 68 young scholars who were picked as college scholars in February. This makes it 118 total college scholars. It is mentioned in the press release today. So there is no significant drop in winners.
Here is the statement from the article
“These 50 scholars join the 68 current Cooke Young Scholars selected in February to continue to receive the organization’s support to form the 2020 cohort of 118 new College Scholars. A full list of the 2020 Cooke College Scholars, including the high schools and states they represent, can be found here.”
@Lilyyy123 , I seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I guessi had it confused. So 50 non young scholars were selected. what was the pool for that? and 68 young scholars, but what was the pool for that?
On the press release for semis, it says that they would pick roughly 60. Does that mean non young scholars?
@DasaniH20 The young scholars were selected in middle school so it’s a smaller pool that apply for the college scholarship. For the non youth scholars, there were 5400 high school applicants. It is much harder to win the college scholarship since the transfer scholarship had only 1500 applicants.
Thank you for the clarification! It finally makes sense. @Lilyyy123
@salam2 , can you ask your sister’s friend if she got an email this week regarding the zoom call? Or how are they doing it?
Actually @FABRICEV if you go into Common App and go to the “Check Status” tab for your application, you’ll see that it has a spot that is awaiting an official copy of your transcript to be sent in. Last year I sent mine directly to JKCF instead of sending it through Common App because I didn’t realize until late in January that it was waiting for it. This year I sent it into Common App.
@salam2 I was recognized by my school for the work I have been doing since the shutdowns due to the coronavirus. So I emailed them about the same time you did and sent them the info. They told me basically the same thing. That it was added to my profile but it probably wouldn’t hold as much merit as something that was in there to begin with because they were so far along in the process.
I would assume they look at income since they announce what the “average income” of the scholars is. Beyond that, I don’t know. My income is not high as I am a single mother of 2 kids, one of which is in college himself. I was a semi-finalist last year and was not chosen. So I don’t have any other insight into how finances factor in.
This has nothing to do with PTK. So your lack of membership in PTK shouldn’t have any bearing on this at all. There are a lot of people who can’t afford the dues to join PTK that aren’t members for financial reasons, not because of their grades.
I believe the foundation does more than just look at raw income. You can’t compare a family of 5 living in Kansas on $40,000 to a family of 5 in South Florida with an income of $40,000. I believe the foundation does a DEEP look into taxes, assets, projection of assets, etc. I believe that’s why the scholarship doesn’t limit application to a certain threshold, I believe they prefer under $95,000. They wouldn’t put $95,000 if they weren’t going to select.
$95,000 sounds like a lot for a family, but cost of living, expenses, debt, etc. all play a role in the true “net worth”. So if your family income is below $95,000, you should be good. They kinda prefer around the range of $27,000 to $35,000. That’s just my estimate, but who knows on the back end. Last’s year average was $28,000. They did post some findings on their research “Persistence”. I posted the link if you’re interested.
@salam2 I was talking to my counselor and they told me that if we have any changes in our financial situation, that we should contact the financial aid offices at the schools that we applied to and that we were admitted to. This is so we can ask if there can be any adjustments to our financial aid award.
BIG surprise on Wednesday or Thursday guys… I spoke to multiple of the 2020 high school Cooke scholars and I got some insight from the foundation. but, let’s save that till next week…
ps. real juicy, I asked every question at the high school scholars LMAO. Of course, they could only answer questions that pertained to the high school level, but I did get some gold nuggets of info. So I’m putting all my eggs on Wednesday guys (Latest is Thursday, as the special event is Friday). Jesus, less than 5 days till the world changes. But we’ll still be the same old, kicking and persevering!
hey, I just found this forum.
Spent the last hour and half reading from page 1-26. I also got semi-finalist and been attempting not to think about it since submitting my application and hearing back. That is until now, I mean… who isn’t thinking about this now. Anyways, Haven’t heard from them since, so pretty bummed about it and noting the way trends of years privy to this one have gone, I believe I won’t be a recipient.
That’s okay though, I’m very proud to have least been a semi-finalist.
I’m extremely proud that all of you are extraordinary individuals and clearly are deserving for the scholarship.
Wish I had found this thread earlier, but glad I found it now.
I’m not counting myself out yet, I don’t know until I know. Maybe I’m that small gap of students who never heard a thing back from the foundation and still got it, haha, one can dream. Regardless, the journey has been fun and the grey hairs on my head and the bags under my eyes just remind me of funny moments.
Good luck to everyone in the upcoming week and fingers crossed!!!
Just so y’all know a bit more about me:
From Miami, Florida
English + Comm/PR/Marketing major - emphasis on pre-law for entertainment law
top choices: Stanford and Brown
applied: (15) UF, UM, ( three other Florida safety schools), Emerson, UC LA/Berkeley/SD/SB, USC, Stanford, Brown, Upenn and Cornell
accepted: Florida schools, Emerson and Berkeley.
waiting on: UC LA/SD/SB, Stanford, Brown, Upenn and Cornell
and yes, it is 5:10 in the morning. All these decisions coming out and the decision for JCK looming over our heads has given me a lot of anxiety and low-key has been ruining my sleep schedule.
Just a reminder for everyone. PLZ stay after the official press release so we can do a survey to help the next years semis. @iggywiggly and I have made the survey and it is ready.
Also, don’t forget to join the 2020 JKCF Semifinals Facebook page. Staying connected is key.
On boy… there’s been a lot of action since I’ve been away…
So much to read lol.
Hang in there… just days away, we’re almost there.
Y’all I’m freaking out. Have any of you looked into your Cal Grant Application? For some reason mine wasn’t awarded, and the information on my application was completely wrong (you don’t enter it it I think they get it from the FAFSA). For some reason it says I’m married (I’m not, and my FAFSA says I’m single) and it says I have a 2.88 GPA at a College that I never attended, even though I don’t have a 2.88. I’m kind of freaking out because majority of my aid would come from Cal Grant and I’m not likely to get JKC bc I wasn’t contacted for additional information. Did any of y’all have a similar problem with Cal Grant? I’m freaking out ?
Oh wow. I don’t qualify for federal or state aid yet, but it seems like there has been a huge mistake on their side. There might be someone with the same name/last name as yours and the officer has not paid closer attention to your social security or other info and just mixed up your information. One of my high school teachers had a similar problem. His and this other person’s (who had the same first name and last name) SAT test scores got mixed which caused him to get rejected from one of the universities he had applied to. He had to appeal the decision since he saw that the scores in his portal were not his scores. Long story short, he got accepted eventually. Just contact them and they’ll probably help you to fix the problem.
@muffinbun thanks so much! I’ll contact them ASAP. Also, what happened to your teacher is crazy!
@CalPlsAcceptMe I had CalGrant issues too: your community college submits the GPA info so contact financial aid or records to see if they can check what was submitted. While at CC my husband always got CalGrants and I never qualified but we had the same GPA, income and pretty much everything else. We never managed to resolve that beyond being told that funds were limited.
One thing I discovered through the process was that there was an age cut off at state level for the 4-year-college Cal Grant (the one that kicks in after transfer, I can never keep the A/B/C straight) where they restricted it to students under age 27. There was a bill moving through the house that aimed to raise that by a year or two but we still would have been excluded.
All of this stuff aside, Cal still managed to offer us both full rides. If you have your acceptance from them at this point it would be worth contacting their financial aid office too.
Best of luck with your transfer journey and beyond!