Scholarships! Scholarships! Scholarships!

I Know What You Should Be Doing This Winter Break:

For now, what I think you should be doing during this current winter break is applying for as many scholarships as you can!

College is not cheap.

My favorite websites is: College Greenlight
This one filters the best fit scholarships (and colleges) for you. They also send you deadlines in your email. It also supports you during your first few years in college. I also like that it can help you look for scholarships that are closer to your region. I highly recommend applying to local scholarships, you may find that these are less competitive than national and more popular ones.

This brings me to my next point:

A scholarship that ALL OF YOU should be applying to is the Gates Millennium Scholarship.
That's right, this one is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You can find more history about it here.

Basically, this scholarship will give you boohkooh dollars for your education. That is
; IT PAYS FOR YOU ENTIRE FOUR YEARS OF COLLEGE PLUS GRADUATE SCHOOL. That means you don't have to worry about money for the rest of your education.

I'll provide the link again:  APPLY! APPLY! APPLY!

Do not miss out on this opportunity like I did! I wish I could have grad school paid for!

I think that if you you are especially a first generation college student, there are more scholarships out there for you. You've just got to look for them. College Greenlight should definitely have a filter for you to fill out, so go for it.

You Got This!

Dear Applicant,

We are proud to tell you that you have been accepted to Prestigious University! Welcome to the Class of 2020!

I know so many of you are ready to read those exact words on your letters. Hearing these words will echo in your ear and you'll be riding on cloud nine for months because of your accomplishment.

This past semester though, I know was rough for a lot of you. On top of worrying about applying to college, you may have had to prepare for Finals, take care of family, work, or some other crucial activity. Some of you may have completed early admissions. For some of you, this was the best semester of your high school career, and some, not so great.

Before I say anything else, I just want to tell you how special you are, and how great you are doing regardless of everything else happening right now. There's so much going on in your life that you often feel lost. Granted, this time is probably one of the most difficult, mentally and emotionally challenging that you may experience in your lifetime, but you have gotten through it. Despite how urgent everything seems to be, remember to take time out for yourself, and reflect.

Your mental and physical health are of the utmost priority, and if you feel you are being deprived of any thing that is negatively contributing to your quality of life, then reach out. Reach out to whomever you trust enough to tell your largest struggles. That person or people do not always have to be your parents; they can be mentors, siblings, counselors, teachers, etc. Just remember not to keep all that negative energy bubbling inside. And you can vent to me if you need to, but you have to promise to trust me when I say this: It will get better.

Happy Colleging, and New Year!

--E.

TWITTER!!

I am so proud to see all of you checking out the page! I hope it is being used as a good resource for you.


What I am also proud of is our Twitter account that we have set up. Please utilize it as your best resource! We shall also be posting deals weekly on this page as well. Check it out:


@firstgenfirst

It's Savings Time!

I know I have not posted to this wonderful page in a while... But the posts that will follow shortly thereafter should and will make up for that!


For now, I want to introduce you to some websites that, if you are a penny pincher like me, should help you in your future endeavors, whether for college and beyond.


For savings in the atmosphere of retail shopping, check this one out: retailmenot.com


For awesome savings on textbooks: chegg.com


For more awesome savings on textbooks: slugbooks.com


I hope these websites help you. By the way, if you ever need to purchase textbooks for classes that use classic texts, just look them up in the public domain. By federal law, books whose authors have been dead for more than seventy years are automatically free in the public domain/internet database. All you have to do is look them up, and download. ;)


Happy saving!

-- First Gen. 

It's a Beautiful World

Continuing on with being good enough...

And also the problem of people asking you, again and again AND AGAIN what programs you were admitted for, what your GPA was, your test scores, what your EFC was, and even what you wrote about in your PERSONAL STATEMENT (there is a [i] reason [/i] why it is called that.

People will test you, over and over. They will assume that because you got into said university or college that you have a planned your entire life out, and that said place was your "first choice" school (something I do not believe in, by the way. You never know how things are going to work out.) It might get a little painful to repeat time and time again that you have absolutely no clue what you want to study, or what career you were planning to pursue. It just wasn't built into your genetic code, as a first generation student, to have goals farther than the scope of your local neighborhood and past the local grocery store. It's a shock. It's terrifying, but at the same time, it is also beautiful.

It is a beautiful phenomena because you made it. You did. And you have the option of choosing to opt-out whenever you want to, but you will forever have the bragging rights (even though that is not your thing).

But you have to be tough, because people will test you, and make you feel like you don't belong here and that you should not have gotten in. They accepted you, quite literally of all the people in the world, it is you that they want.

It's a beautiful, crazy thing. 

Worth it

The realization of going to a prestigious university feels surreal--extremely surreal.

At first.

At first you will deny it: "Oh, they couldn't possibly mean me...They might have mixed me up with another person. Yeah! You know how common _[insert ethnically ambiguous/extremely rare name here]__ is!!! Every body has [i] that [/i] name!"

Or you're dealing with the trappings of...

Looking, searching for any mistakes they could have made in the email. Is that apostrophe or hyphen in your name in the right place? Are you categorized as the appropriate gender on your page? Is it the correct location? Email address? Major you put in? There has to be something wrong, somewhere in this notification.

Then you wait an entire week to check if the email has changed. Then after that week, and then some, you realize that it is real. You got in---not someone else.


The only problem now is dealing with the feeling of worthiness. 

ANother page.

I am figuring out how this page thing works.

http://firstgenandproud.blogspot.com/p/cool-stuff.html