How Students Plan to Pay for College
While most Arrowhead High School students will agree that an education is a necessity and will pay off, the thousands of dollars in yearly tuition is enough to make anyone wince.
A 2013 study, according to usnews.com, said that US students were nearing 30,000 dollars in debt by the time of college graduation–and this is a number that is still growing.
“It sounds pretty pathetic actually,” says Olivia Van Airsdale, Arrowhead senior who hopes to attend Carroll University in fall 2016. “That I’ll have to be thousands of dollars in debt to get an education and, hopefully, a career I can be proud of.”
“I’m stressed out about [paying for college],” says Van Airsdale. “But I also know that tuition prices aren’t changing any time soon and that it’s best to just bite the bullet.”
“It’s not like it used to be,” says Kristina Natalizio, a mother of three Arrowhead students. “Fifty years ago you didn’t necessarily need to go college to be successful.”
“Education is an [investment,]” says Arrowhead junior Spencer Dahlman.
“You just can’t think about [student debt],” says Marissa Dooley, a Pewaukee High School graduate and current freshman at Mt. Mary University, “otherwise you’ll stress yourself out. It’s best to just ignore how much money you owe and focus on school. Make sure the loan is worth it at least.”
“There really is no way around [student loans],” says Dahlman. “Unless you’re a star athlete and you can get a full ride scholarship or something.”
The most popular answer for how students plan to pay for college is, aside from student loans, scholarships.
Contrary to the popular belief that scholarships are only given to the 4.0 student or athletes, there are several of places that undergraduates and high school seniors can apply for scholarships.
Arrowhead has a list of scholarships on it’s website. All the scholarships are listed by scholarship name, yearly category, due date, and the amount the scholarship is worth. For more information on Arrowhead’s list of scholarships, visit the website here.
There are also many scholarships listen on the Naviance, a website devoted to helping students navigate their way through the confusion of researching schools, calculate their chances of acceptances, and much more.
“Students’ use of Naviance was very low,” says Kathie Mitich, an Arrowhead guidance counselor. But despite Arrowhead’s slow use of Naviance, the website still lists many scholarships and many more are added to their list of scholarships continuously.
“[It’s important to] keep in mind the scholarships pick up a bit more second semester,” said Mitich.
Cierra Clark, a senior at Waukesha North High School is currently in the running for a scholarship.
“My parents are making me pay for college myself,” says Clark, “They said that if I want to go to college, it’s something I have to pay for myself.”
“Scholarships are the best way to pay for college,” she says. “Unless you get a full ride scholarship, odds are you’ll be in some kind of debt and the best way to handle that is just to apply for scholarships. There are plenty of people that want to give money to young students and it’s kind of a shame when students don’t look for those opportunities because they were too lazy. It’ll save them big time in the long run.”
