Navigating Financial Aid (Feat. Bethany Hubert)

Bethany Hubert is proud of her work helping families navigate the expensive costs of higher education. As she explains, the co-founders of Going Merry launched the brand as a project during their time at Stanford as a solution to centralize and simplify the financial aid process. It has grown to assist hundreds of thousands of students across the U.S. in navigating this complicated landscape.

Through a process called scholarship matching Bethany describes that scholarship matching involves students creating a profile on Going Merry, where they are asked common scholarship application questions upfront. Going Merry then matches their profile against a vetted database of scholarships and auto fills as many applications as possible. This saves students a significant amount of time and removes frustrating steps. 

Bethany suggests a multifaceted approach to reducing college expenses, including living in lower-cost dorms, off-campus, or with family, sharing or buying used books, and choosing lower-cost meal plans. She also recommends exploring options like AP courses, dual enrollment, and community college for the first two years. She emphasized the importance of making a variety of applications, including in-state, out-of-state, private, public, and community colleges, to maximize financial aid opportunities.

This week, you’ll learn how removing buffer points and obstacles help financial aid applicants be more successful in their quest, why essay writing on scholarship submissions is a very strong way to attain awards, and the difference between grants and loans.

LEARN MORE:

>>> earnest.com

>>> goingmerry.com

NSLS MEMBERS ONLY:

>> Listen to the bonus episode to learn what’s next for the Going Merry organization and how Going Merry plans to expand more in the future. (https://thens.ls/4cP777b)

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