By J.D. EDDY, Editorial Editor
Students are shown at the November 2021 Ranger Preview event, a popular recruiting event.
How could a simple website help open scholarship opportunities for Northwestern students?
Northwestern needs to increase the number of outside scholarship opportunities to reduce the amount of money that people have to pay out of pocket. It also needs to create a website containing all of these outside scholarships.
Financial aid plays a big role in people’s decisions on whether they are going to college.
Federal Student Aid helps to allow individuals who cannot obtain high-level scholarships due to grades, or some unforeseen circumstances that are out of their control.
During my freshman year of college, my mom took out her retirement to pay off the house. To go along with that, it raised our income so much that I could not receive financial aid.
Tuition at Northwestern is $7,462 annually, according to the university website. That does not include room and board, which on average costs $5,040 per school year.
Even with the academic scholarships that I had, it was not enough to cover even half of my tuition. At the time, the school did not offer a lot of ways to apply for outside scholarships.
I was lucky that my family set aside money for school, but it’s not enough to pay for all of my tuition. It was meant to keep me afloat for the first few years, especially after I quit playing football.
I’m saying this to emphasize that I didn’t have a lot of options to pay for college.
Tuition has risen nationally by more than $3,000 over the past 14 years, and the financial aid decreased by $2,500 per student, according to the Oklahoma Policy Institute.
After my freshman year at Northwestern I went to Southern Nazarene in Bethany. The average cost of SNU is $18,000 annually, according to the university website.
This is something that made me appreciate the low cost of tuition at Northwestern. It also made me realize that we needed more outside scholarship opportunities.
Some programs help students coming out of high school: Oklahoma Promise, federal grants and Pell grants. These services give students money to help with college and not get stacked with student loan debt.
Some colleges have websites attached to their main sites allowing the kids to have access to scholarships that are offered by companies or other organizations.
Places like Caltech, Wichita University and even the D1 Northwestern in Illinois offer plenty that can help students fulfill their dreams of going to college.
This is something our college needs to create so that it can bring enrollment. The college will be seen as more affordable to the average student.
If Northwestern had such a website, parents would be able to breathe easier, knowing that their children have access to scholarships.
It also makes the university look more eager to help students. If we were able to expand the amount of financial aid, scholarships and grants that the school offered, more students would enroll here.
We have some incredible programs at Northwestern, including our nursing program, one of the best in the country. Students have many reasons like this to come here, and we can help make the choice easier by improving scholarship opportunities.
Northwestern is my home, and it is for many others, too. All I want is to see this place live up to its potential. These are just a few ways to increase enrollment.
By working with community leaders to create new scholarship opportunities, and by organizing scholarship opportunities on the university website, Northwestern can improve its standing among the academic community.
Getting this information out there can inspire change. Northwestern can improve the lives of Rangers and help others make the choice to become one.
This screengrab from the Northwestern website shows internal scholarship opportunities at Northwestern. The author believes Northwestern needs a site for outside scholarships.