“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
President Abraham Lincoln
Scholars Path was founded based on first-hand experience, dedication and pure necessity of finding financial means to pursue a college education and ensure a higher retention rate. Many families became victims of the Great Recession of 2008, which resulted in job losses, family health issues and an inability to meet basic living expenses. This made the dream for at-risk students with great academic potential to attend college increasingly unreachable. Many students are left behind because neither they nor their parents can afford to pay for college and neither knows how to win scholarships to offset the cost. The workshops provided by Scholars Path deliver essential information and strategies that have increased students’ success rates.
The Scholarship Workshop prepares parents and students for their pursuit of college scholarships. It helps them understand the steps and key components of preparing, applying and winning scholarships. The lead presenter, Kailyn Bates is a great example of initiative, perseverance and ambition. Like President Lincoln previously declared, she had to create her own future, thereby increasing her probabilities for success. She graduated from high school with eleven scholarships. She had the most external scholarships in her graduating class of 279 students without having a 3.0 gpa. Most teenagers’ first response is to share their success stories with their friends and teachers; Kailyn was no different. When she won her first college scholarship as a high school junior, she enthusiastically shared her excitement with her classmates and teachers. As she continued her scholarship pursuit, she continued to win and continued to share her exciting news. We began realizing that our strategies were pretty effective and many parents and students were unfamiliar with how to pursue and create top-notch scholarship packets. After the 6th and 7th scholarship wins, her classmates became even more curious and as their own pursuits of scholarships proved fruitless, they began to inquire about how they too, could change their strategies to become more successful in winning scholarships. Kailyn and her mother realized that most families were crippled by an overwhelming unfamiliarity with understanding the scholarship process and becoming successful recipients.
Together, they began to interact with other families one-on-one to provide as much help as they could. With this in mind, Kailyn developed a detailed scholarship workshop for parents, high school students and undergraduate students. She and her mother, Wanda Bates present in tandem because this strategy helps parents gain crucial knowledge and insight from a parent’s perspective regarding topics like learning essential information those financial aid offices will not voluntarily share. Meanwhile, students will gain confidence and a great understanding from a fellow student who just recently overcame the very challenges they are facing; learning how to tap into the billions of dollars of FREE (scholarship) money.
Secondly, the Scholarship Essay Writing (Prep) Workshop emerges as an extension of the essay section in the Scholarship Workshop. It is geared to assist high school freshmen through college undergraduates with revisiting forgotten concepts and closing the gap between mastering writing skills and applying those proficiencies to create meaningful literary works of art. They learn how to apply literary techniques so their essays are more likely to be read and strongly considered in scholarship competitions, because with all other things being equal most scholarships are won based on the essay.
Kailyn’s ability to comfortably articulate her success story in a public setting allows her to immediately capture her audience’s attention; students and parents alike. She engages them in thought provoking conversations that ultimately lead to opening their minds to become better writers. This 2-hr workshop minimizes the writing anxiety that many young writers encounter. The lead presenter shows students how to overcome those obstacles, capture their readers’ attention and much…much more.
The next major obstacle that scholars face on their post-secondary journey is equally important to master. They are challenged with successfully transforming from a high school teenager to an independent scholar and eventually a responsible career-driven young adult. High school graduates’ 1st year of college bring about an enormous amount of anxiety, excitement and greater means of personal responsibilities. Unfortunately, many scholars are not prepared to handle those newer responsibilities which often times lead to making bad decisions that could ultimately alter or even ruin their dreams and passions. Making this transition is a slippery slope for many scholars because they are unprepared for the challenge of independent living and independent thinking. Often these two factors are overlooked and rarely discussed until it is nearly too late and academic success is jeopardized.
The third workshop provided by Scholars Path is the College Transition Workshop. From graduating high school to entering college, Kailyn lunged into becoming an independent young adult who now must take the lead with respect to her own future. This shift was bigger than what she and many of her peers expected. As a result, Kailyn evaluated her challenges and surveyed her freshman peers on various campuses seeking easy and meaningful solutions.
Meanwhile as parents, Mom and Dad navigated their own transitional obstacles of learning how to become better advisors and active advocates of Kailyn’s new persona. They had all of the ‘important conversations’ about pitfalls, distractions and life altering decisions which minimized their anxieties. They felt confident in knowing that she was not only academically prepared, but emotionally and socially ready for the new independence and higher levels of responsibility that awaited her. The parents’ personal experiences and Kailyn’s peer feedback led to developing the College Transition Workshop.
The College Transition Workshop helps the next generation of college freshmen and their advocates have a smoother transition from high school to college life. The workshop creates a forum of open discussions for both advocates and students on stress-related topics that often lead to bad decisions if they are not addressed and resolved in a timely manner.
These topics include:
| Peer Pressure | Budget & Financial Responsibilities |
| Self-Discipline | Roommates (Sharing & Compromising) |
| Sexual Responsibility | Home Sickness… and much more |
| Time Management |
Statistics continue to show at-risk minority students as the class least likely to succeed due to the overabundance of obstacles placed in their paths. While they may possess the academic potential, ambition and perseverance, they still lack the finances, networking resources and mentoring opportunities in comparison to their counterparts. Their path to a successful career via a college degree quickly crumbles due to circumstances beyond their control. This leaves many bright futures scarred, devastated and unfulfilled. As a result, the diversity of our workforce, our democracy, the overall growth of our nation and our national leadership are in grave danger of imploding.