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Episode 67: Building a Scholarship System with Jocelyn Pearson
175 Plays5 years ago
Getting through college without crushing debt may seem like an insurmountable task. But it does not have to be. What if you encouraged your child to spend their time applying for scholarships instead of mowing lawns, working at a fast-food joint, or babysitting? The payoff could be 10 fold or even more.
But how would that work? That’s what our guest, Jocelyn Pearson, is going to tell you. It’s pretty amazing. Instead of a summer job earning maybe $4,000 if they are lucky, imagine your kids spending that time learning life skills and getting through college debt-free, basically earning exponentially more per hour for their efforts. It is not impossible, and it’s got nothing to do with test scores.
Our guest, Jocelyn Pearson founded The Scholarship System to share her own experience of graduating from college debt-free. When college looked unaffordable for her, she sprang into action and secured over $126,000 in college scholarships, even receiving an overage check each semester for her expenses. It wasn’t an easy process. It took her years to figure out exactly what to do to be selected for these scholarships. Now, she helps families learn how they can do this themselves. By teaching her six-step system, she has helped families secure multiple millions in scholarships and it just keeps growing.
what you will learn in this episode:- How to get through college without debt
- Understanding the two sides of a debt-free degree
- Why having a system is so important for avoiding college debt
- How your kids can get debt-free education without sacrificing your financial future
- The “4 Cs” to a debt-free degree
- Why finding scholarships is just one piece of a debt-free degree strategy
- How to think differently about earning for college
- Common myths about who can qualify for scholarships
- How to keep up the scholarship application process through college
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Living an Uncommon Life
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
00:00:27
Speaker
A life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey. Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Uncommon Life Project where I am your host, Philip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. I cannot wait to shoot this one. Here's what the deal. If you're brand new to us and I think a lot of people will do this because this topic is so hot right now and Brian and I do have a bone to pick, we will be totally kidding. We've got a bone to
College Challenges and Scholarship Insights
00:00:54
Speaker
pick. We do.
00:00:54
Speaker
We're going to be getting on the old soapbox on this one because we're talking about college, college funding, college scholarships. We have an amazing guest on the show. We are financial advisors that like to do things a little different. And I don't know if you've ever had an experience with financial advisors, but both Brian and I have. And we hated every experience that we had with financial advisors. We never felt like they were advocates for us. We always felt like they were advocates to put us in some kind of product.
00:01:24
Speaker
and take our money away from us. We're financial advisors that like to put more money in your pocket. We also like to put you in control of all of your money and we think that you are your best asset. So if that sounds intriguing to you, one, welcome to the Uncommon Life.
00:01:41
Speaker
because you have to be different and no one's really teaching you how to think about finances in a different way that puts you in control. That's what we are at Uncommon Wealth Partners. That's the company we created. This podcast is out there to highlight people that are already doing this uncommon life well
00:01:59
Speaker
or it's going to help you get down this uncommon life for yourself. This is a tip that we are going to give you as a gift to help you think about college differently. And I'm telling you, everybody should be listening to this podcast. So let's get our guests on the show. Jocelyn, give us the bio, Brian, and then let's get on the show.
Jocelyn Pearson's Debt-Free Journey
00:02:18
Speaker
Yes, we have Jocelyn Pearson founded the scholarship system to share her own experience of graduating from college with zero. And I said zero. When college looked unaffordable for her, she sprang into action and secured over $126,000 in college scholarships, even receiving an overage check for her expenses. It wasn't an easy process. It took her years to figure out exactly what to do to be selected for these scholarships. Now she helps
00:02:46
Speaker
Families learn how they can do this themselves by teaching her six step system. Families have secured over multiple seven figures in scholarships and growing. Jocelyn is from Charleston, South Carolina, and is married to her husband, Donnie. Welcome to the show, Jocelyn Pearson. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you guys.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yes, I'm also excited about that voice that Brian had at the end. Kind of voiceover-ish. I get a little radio-ish when I go into the bio. I like it. Very professional. Jocelyn, you have some knowledge that we need to get out of your head.
00:03:21
Speaker
Help us empower the listeners to go down this uncommon approach about financing college. One, congratulations for figuring out the cheat code of life of this because a lot of people need it. And then two, tell us how they can be a part of this. For sure. Let's go. Yeah. Oh gosh. There's so much I can share.
00:03:45
Speaker
Just uncommon wealth, this is why I think we all get along so well.
Strategies for a Debt-Free Degree
00:03:50
Speaker
One of the things we talk about when it comes to paying for college with our families is that they have to be a little rebellious. And it's funny because honestly, as a kid, I wouldn't say I was too rebellious. But when it came to paying for college and I saw the debt that people are taking on,
00:04:06
Speaker
That's when kind of my rebellion kicked in and now I'm an entrepreneur. So I guess it stuck with me. But for us, when it comes to paying for college, we can't do things like normal families do because we'll get normal results, which unfortunately right now means buried in debt, paying for on average over 20 years. Yes, I know they borrow for 10, but they usually take twice as long. And so what we say is they're hashtag rebel families. So some families might be hearing this and thinking,
00:04:35
Speaker
I don't know if I believe this. Is it really possible to get a debt free degree? But we have families pull it off all the time. But the thing is, again, it takes some unique strategies. So for me, my main focus for paying for college was scholarships. That's my bread and butter. And I was able to get over six figures in scholarships. I didn't get a large amount from my university, actually, which is surprising to most people. My university gave me, I think, like $2,000 a year or something like that.
00:05:03
Speaker
So I had to kind of go at it the average students way, where I got small scholarships that added up to a free ride. So 500, 600, 1200, 3000, the ones that most students balk at, they say, Oh, that's not worth it. But I mean, you tell me what 17, 18 year old makes maybe $500 in two hours, right? Right.
00:05:27
Speaker
So that was my main strategy. But there are lots of different strategies when it comes to paying for college that we can combine. And that's what we teach our families. It's about stacking strategies. So taking little pieces here, little pieces there to slowly accumulate up to a free ride. And the easiest way to break it down is there's two sides to a debt-free degree.
00:05:49
Speaker
One side is getting the bill down to as little as we can. And then the other side of that equation is finding debt-free money to pay for what's left. OPM. I love it. I want to share something. Let me address it. Because I'm pretty excited about this.
00:06:06
Speaker
Here's the difference between Brian and I and back in the day when you're taking out a loan for college. It was a private loan. Now these loans are government loans that you're taking, meaning they can garnish your wages if you don't pay them.
00:06:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it is. I mean, the stakes are high for the stakes are really high. And the word I, you know, we've talked about this in our podcast with Junior Achievement. This is an epidemic, epidemic. It's like 1.3 or 1.4 trillion now in student loan debt in just this country. And I think 30% of it is non-performing or delinquent, which means people haven't paid in 90 days.
00:06:47
Speaker
So this is a huge, huge thing. And I want, we're on our soapbox and I know you are on one too. The other thing I really like about your, your system Jocelyn is the word system.
00:07:01
Speaker
This is one of the biggest investments that families could make. And I'm going to put my financial advisor hat on first.
Financial Pressures and Systematic Approaches
00:07:08
Speaker
When you look at like the three legged stool of retirement used to be pensions, social security, and then your personal savings. For most people, especially, you know, 30 to 50 right now, most people don't have a pension.
00:07:21
Speaker
So the onus is now on you to save for retirement, whatever shape and form, we're not going to get into that. And now you look at Social Security, which is now being closed. They're closing all these different filing strategies to save tens of billions of dollars. And so most of the people under 40 that we talked to, or 45, are not planning on Social Security. I think it'll be there, but it won't be the percentage that it is today for the retirees.
00:07:44
Speaker
Then you look at having children and health insurance. Health insurance used to largely be covered by the employer. A lot of people, that's not the case now. And now you look at this societal pressure to send your kids to college. And we saw what happened in Hollywood, these people paying just to get their kids into these big name schools and the scandals that that created. So you have this pressure to send your kids and get these degrees and spend all this money
00:08:09
Speaker
And a lot of it is that and so you need a system. Especially if you have multiple kids we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential expenses here. So the thing that i love just want you to kind of dig into this is you have a system you know you look at like mcdonald's the reason they were so successful they had a system follow the system.
00:08:30
Speaker
So walk our listeners through your kind of system, if you would, at a high level. And being a rebelist family doesn't mean that you sacrifice your retirement and your goals to make sure your kids are debt free and putting all your hardworking money to their scholarships, like their financing to college. I think that's a really big thing that people are doing right now is like, well, I'll sacrifice my future to make sure my kid has a better
00:08:59
Speaker
trajectory. And I'm telling you, that's not solid. Please think differently. Don't be a rebellious family and think that you can do this and just sacrifice yourself and then you're working until kingdom come. Think differently. Okay, now back to you, Jocelyn.
00:09:17
Speaker
Well, you know, and just to add to that, that's actually a statistic. We share a lot. Over 4 million parents and grandparents have cosigned loans and they are now having their social security checks or their tax refunds taken by the government. Wow. 4 million.
00:09:32
Speaker
So when we're talking about this, we tell our families the same thing about the importance. We understand they want to give the bright future to their child. They want to give them their dream school. They want them to be able to go where they want and pursue their dreams. But at the same time, these consequences of the debt are not just impacting the student, not even just impacting their parents.
00:09:52
Speaker
it is also impacting their grandparents. You can't claim bankruptcy on these loans. You're stuck with them, whether you co-sign them, you know, and, and if you co-sign them as well, if your student, something happens to them and you co-signed it, they're yours now. So, you know, I don't want to be just doom and gloom here, but I do hope families are seeing the urgency of trying to get a debt free degree or at least minimize as much as possible. So to your question about this, yeah, to your question
The Four Cs Framework for Scholarships
00:10:19
Speaker
about the system. So,
00:10:22
Speaker
Actually, first, we have a six-step system when it comes to securing scholarships, and I do want to get into that. But first, I want to talk about how we show the debt-free degree because we talked about how when it comes to getting a debt-free degree, paying for college, scholarships is a huge piece of that. For me, it was the major strategy, but there are a lot of strategies outside of that. How we organize those is the four Cs, the four Cs to a debt-free degree.
00:10:47
Speaker
And those are college, cash, costs, and, oh, look at me. Now I'm forgetting my own four C's. You've got college, cash, credits, and costs, okay? So college, of course, is choosing the right school. It's choosing the affordable fit. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to go to a lesser school.
00:11:07
Speaker
It just means that actually let's follow the money and see what schools pop up because believe it or not, we've had students actually using our search methods. They found out that Duke was actually a possibility and they never ever thought that they'd be able to afford Duke. But because of understanding how financial aid works and merit aid and all of the stuff and private schools and need meeting schools, there's so much to put into it. But
00:11:33
Speaker
students would be surprised if they would open up the, if they would broaden their view on which schools are possibilities. They might be able to find some that cut down a huge chunk of the bill. So that's a big one. Credits is another big piece where it comes to, can we get credits while we're in college or sorry, in high school? Maybe it's AP, IB, dual enrollment, bridge programs, whatever it is. Can we knock out credits before we even get to college at a fraction of the cost?
00:11:59
Speaker
And then we have costs, of course, which is budgeting. How can we save money on books, leaving our car at home, whatever it is. And then the fourth C is cash, where that's where scholarships come in. Where can we get, like you said, OPM, other people's money to pay for this? So the four C's, if we can think of it in that way, because if we kind of just think of, oh my gosh, there's so many different strategies, it gets a little overwhelming.
00:12:22
Speaker
So we tell our families, just pick one of the C's and start there and then go to the next C and then the next and the next. Do one strategy in each and then you can circle back around. So that's really how we look at organizing the debt free degree.
00:12:35
Speaker
I think that's good. And you know, just to edify that point and to help you step into this, if you think about the average high school kid going out to summer or even a college kid for the summer, how much money do you think they really can earn if they go get a job? Like let's say three, $4,000 maybe. I mean, they're working full time, maybe mowing lawns, but like you're talking about.
00:13:00
Speaker
Tens of thousands of dollars if they keep this as a focus if this is their job during the summer one they're gonna have way more flexibility and two they're gonna be a lot more profitable yeah help empower your child to think differently about the summer and say how can we maximize this time.
Summer Scholarships vs Traditional Jobs
00:13:20
Speaker
and get you the best bang for your buck for college. And this is a way to do it. So you can almost align yourself with them and let them be the one that's working. And they're not going to be working at the lifeguard or mowing lawns. They're going to be doing different things. And I'm telling you, that's powerful mindset that you can instill in your children, you know, right away. So love it. Absolutely.
00:13:42
Speaker
We've had some students where, in the end, we figured it out and they averaged $200 to $400 an hour in work. You talked about the system, so getting into the scholarship system. The reason we called it a system was because when I graduated debt-free, I went into the corporate world, corporate finance actually, and I had a ton of people calling me and saying, Jocelyn, how did you do this?
00:14:05
Speaker
And I kept telling them what I did over and over. And I realized, oh my gosh, I sound like a broken record. This is a step-by-step system. It's a process. They just have to follow it. And the best part about any system, in my opinion, is that as you continue to do it, you get more and more efficient.
00:14:23
Speaker
For me, my earnings looked like a hockey stick. So upfront, it was $500 was my first win. Then it was another thousand, then another 2000. But then by my final years in college, I was winning 50% of what I was submitting. I didn't even have to submit that many applications at that point to get what I needed. I just needed a little bit. And I ended up with six figures, but my efforts were inverse.
00:14:47
Speaker
So they were high upfront. I had to get my materials in place exactly. And then by senior year, my amount of time was a few hours, maybe over spring break, a few hours, maybe over winter break. It was nothing. So that's why we want to get a well-oiled system in place because it is a continuous thing. And some people might be hearing this thinking, wow, this sounds like a lot of work. But like you said, if they're spending the hours mowing lawns anyway, why don't we do something where we can get paid 10 fold, a hundred fold even.
00:15:17
Speaker
It's a lot of work and it's a life skill that you're investing in your children. And I'm telling you that skill, that value that you'd be instilling of them working smarter, not harder or just like different is so powerful. And I've told this, like my parents are hard workers and that's what they instilled in me. And I'm super grateful for that. I wish there was a mentor in my life younger to say, hey, there's a little different way that you can think about this. You're still working just as hard.
00:15:46
Speaker
but you're thinking about this different where other people can be doing things for you and like working through different things and maybe you can apply for different things. It's just you're working differently, just as hard, but differently and it's producing massive results. So valuable.
00:16:04
Speaker
Jocelyn, I want to break this down because Phillip and I were shoulder to shoulder with people at the kitchen table. Now it's Zoom. We're in COVID right now, but in theory, we're shoulder to shoulder. We want our clients to win, but I see this. So help our listeners.
00:16:23
Speaker
How do you get parents? Because I know a lot of parents are listening right now or grandparents. Oh, my Jake, he's not that guy. He couldn't do this. You know what I mean? Or I have one kid that would do it, but I have three children. I don't think the other two. How do you get parents shoulder to shoulder with their students to take advantage of what you have laid out here?
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah. I think one of the biggest reasons students don't do scholarships is because they don't think that they could win. And I think because, so we talk about the four myths of scholarships and when it comes to the myths, a lot of it has to do with the reasons why they don't think they can win. So first and foremost, they think that they have to be an Einstein, right? They have to have this perfect GPA or they have to be the next Tim Tebow or whoever's the next rising star.
00:17:12
Speaker
ACT, SAT score, maybe. Exactly. And so first and foremost, and so this might be where parents start, they start saying, you know, honey, why don't you want to do applications? And so if it comes out like that, well, mom, you know, I have kind of average scores and my ACT is not that great. First, you can tell them, and I'm going to give this to you all is that there are scholarships out there that don't even ask for GPA.
00:17:35
Speaker
don't even ask for ACTs or SATs. In fact, through the scholarship system, we give out money as well as a way to give back. This is our fifth year doing scholarships. And we ask for GPA in case we ever need it for a tiebreaker. We've never used it. We've never used it. It's more based off of how can we tell a story in our essays? How can we sell ourselves and show them? So this is what we talk about. How can we show that
00:18:00
Speaker
I'm a good return on investment. So when we think about who do we want to give scholarship money to, we want to give it to the student that's going to take it
Scholarship Opportunities for All Students
00:18:09
Speaker
and run. They're going to actually graduate from college and actually do something with their life. Now, they might not
00:18:15
Speaker
have an idea of a 100% clear picture of what they're going to do beyond college, but can we at least tell a story, Hey, look, this is one of my passions. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to turn this into a future, but here's what I'm thinking. And you can paint that picture and you can connect it with some stories growing up or whatever it is that can relate to those committees. And so the test scores, we know that that's not indicative of success.
00:18:39
Speaker
So if your students worried because they don't have the best scores, throw that out the window. Um, the other thing, the other reason that a lot of students don't want to do it is they think that maybe they miss the bus. So one of the things with me, if, if you noticed from my story was I kept on applying all through college. So I didn't stop at senior year. That was the beginning for me. And when you get to college, you almost have an easier time winning because you're showing, Hey, I'm doing it. I'm not just in there.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, I'm in here. I'm doing it. I'm doing great. This is what I'm doing in college, taking advantage of it. So it's never too late either. And then the other thing is the doubts is mom, it's going to take too much time. Well, for me, I had just a handful of essays. Actually, you know what? One of our students, she got over $92,000 in scholarships and she got them by the end of
00:19:31
Speaker
senior year. So she did better than I did. But her mom, I asked her, I said, how many scholarships in the end, how many essays would you say you wrote or your daughter wrote? And she said, you know, once she wrote probably three to five essays, she was able to just pull paragraphs from them and reuse them over and over.
00:19:50
Speaker
And that was exactly the same story for me. In fact, once I got to college, I used almost the same essay every time. I just updated at the end of each school year with my latest accomplishments. So that's what we can share with our kids is, look, right now this is going to take some time to figure out where do we find them, build our list of them, put the deadlines on our calendars, write the essays, get them reviewed, fine tune them, collecting the materials. But once we have
00:20:15
Speaker
those. It's just rinsing and repeating. It's just submitting over and over. And so I think that's a huge advantage when we're having this discussion with our students. I'm taking a complete right turn in this. Here's what I mean by this. Like, I love this, the scholarship system that you're doing, but like this, I'm just going to get on my soapbox. This is bigger than the scholarship system.
00:20:38
Speaker
This is an opportunity, and I'm telling you guys, the whole adjective, like fake it till you make it, is made for parenting. I'm telling you what, like we are all faking it till we make it, but we are always trying to figure out where I am, trying to figure out how to instill core values into our children.
00:20:57
Speaker
Let this be this opportunity where you're not only instilling like, hey, here's an opportunity where we are going to help you try to create a story that's going to be way bigger than just getting you out of college debt free. It's going to set you on a path that is going to take you to leaps and bounds way farther than you ever have. This is the opportunity that we have, and I'm going to be shoulder to shoulder with you, son or daughter.
00:21:22
Speaker
to get you through this but the values that you're gonna create in this time period from maybe your freshman year of high school to your senior year of college like is gonna set you down a course of success in a core value that's gonna be instrumental in your life like what a cool opportunity it just happens to be like you're gonna tangibly see scholarship dollars coming in.
00:21:46
Speaker
But you are instilling a value, a core value in your child. And it's an opportunity that we all have, like everybody wants to be debt free. Your kid does, they just don't know how to do it. You want to then pour into them in your core values. This is a great opportunity. So sorry, I'm kind of going a little bit higher than the scholarship.
00:22:05
Speaker
You know, we got an email from a father once that after his daughter started going through our program, and he actually emailed me exactly that. He said, Jocelyn, we haven't, we're just starting to skim the surface, but just the life skills I can already see her getting, this is worth it. And they did end up getting money.
00:22:23
Speaker
But he pulled that out of it as well because, yeah, they're learning discipline. They're learning how to sell themselves. They're building materials also that they can literally use for internships and jobs. And there's just so much, so many benefits that come out of the scholarship process in general. Yeah. And just hearing no, like fighting through. No. Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
I got to give a shout out to Adam Carroll, who's actually the person who introduced us to you or you to us. And one of the things his story, and he talked about it on our podcast was, you know, he went and met with a financial advisor. He said, I want to send my three kids to UNI. The guy did his financial plan and was like, well, you're getting $750,000. And Adam probably walked out of his office and said, yeah, there's got to be a better way than that.
00:23:09
Speaker
But especially for families that have multiple children, I mean, Phillip has three kids, I have three kids. What age, you know, when I look back to my story, you apply for college is kind of that junior, senior year, you get in, you apply for some scholarships for a month or two, and then it's just like, well, okay, now I'm going and now I got to figure it out.
00:23:29
Speaker
My parents paid half, I had to pay half, my paying half was debt. And then I got to my senior year, my last semester and my parents are like, hey, your college fund is out. You got to figure it out. You're three grand short. And I applied for six scholarships and I got one for three grand. And I'm like,
00:23:47
Speaker
Why did I ever stop doing this? Like I made more money in this scholarship than I did working for the last like whatever it was. And so walk her listeners through what is the ideal timeline to kind of get into this? Because I think we heard you kind of tip your hat a little bit. You did this all the way through. You got the college diploma. When should they be starting in high school and when should they stop?
00:24:11
Speaker
Absolutely. So I'm not saying this is when families need to start, but, and your kids are going to hate me for this, there are scholarships out there for kids as young as four years old.
00:24:22
Speaker
Now, of course, that's not that common. They draw pictures. That's not what I'm expecting. But I'd say that just to bring the point that it is never too early either. That said, if it was up to me every sophomore summer, we'd be starting this.
00:24:42
Speaker
because junior year, they can actually submit and win money. And in fact, there are scholarships out there for kids 13 years old.
Starting Early: Sophomore Year Strategy
00:24:49
Speaker
We have a whole list for kids 13 to 15. So there's a lot of money for the younger ages, but we have to start this by junior year. And the reason is not only can they actually submit these materials and receive money. In fact, my first win was the end of junior year in high school.
00:25:08
Speaker
But it also, again, talking about the benefits of this, they're creating materials that they can then use for fall semester when they're in senior year, when they're submitting their applications to colleges. Most seniors they wait until, or most students wait until senior year, spring semester. By then they've missed out on so many deadlines, but also that's when everyone's applying. So they're also going in the most competitive timeframe to apply.
00:25:34
Speaker
So it's exactly, so it's little things like this, little tricks that turn the dial in our favor to increase our chances of winning. So one of those is junior year, we should be working on this. Like sophomore summer, I would start building our list. And you know, one of the cool things is a lot of scholarships, you can see the deadlines that they have, even if your student can't apply to say, say you find a whole bunch of local scholarships, which are some of the best small dollar, but also less competition.
00:26:03
Speaker
Say we find a bunch of them and they were just due a few months ago. More than likely come your students junior year and senior year, those deadlines are going to be in the same month for the most part. We've never changed the month that our deadline's in. So what I do, what we teach our families to do is we can start building our list of scholarships. I'm a spreadsheet nerd. We also created a free app we can link to. They don't have to be one of our members to use it to save scholarships in and set a reminder. So say it's due January, it was due in January. Well,
00:26:32
Speaker
December, the prior December in my senior year, I'm going to set a calendar reminder with the link to that scholarship. And then I'm going to make sure that, hey, they did renew it for this year. Deadline is January 15th. I'm good. So we can start doing these searches now and building these lists now and prepping the materials.
00:26:51
Speaker
Now, and that way, by senior year, we've already started winning, we already have our materials, we're not overwhelmed to mix it in with the admissions process, and we can be done by the time other seniors are starting. That's really good. That's really good. Just showing that you're on top of it and have a system, like you said, the scholarship system.
00:27:11
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So how do our, uh, our clients and everybody, how do they engage? What are they going to expect when they go to the scholarship system? Let's talk through all of that. And like, I think it's important to say like, we have set up a site because we're so passionate about this. It's uncommonwealth.com slash scholarships that you can go to, um, to then hear more about all this, but let's talk through it.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah, so we'll give tons of free resources. We have so many free things out there. So we'll make sure that you guys get those and we'll put it on that page. But when it comes to the scholarship process, first and foremost, we've got to get through some of those mindset blocks. And I know that sounds a little fluffy, but like I just said,
00:27:53
Speaker
It's so true. In fact, actually, one of our programs, we bring in a teen psychologist every month and our parents can say, you know, my students not doing this, my students doing this, whatever, and have those conversations. And that is one of their favorite pieces because it is hard to be the parent and, you know, to motivate them, but you also don't want to strain your relationship. So anyway, that mindset side is very important. We've come to find over half a decade doing this.
00:28:20
Speaker
And so that's step one in the system is getting over the mindset. We've got lots of cool tricks and tools to help students really start owning the process so that you don't feel like you have to do it. And then understanding the basics of paying for college. So we have students that are already in college and they go through this and they're like, Holy cow, I did not know that I was borrowing these loans and they're already building interest.
00:28:42
Speaker
wow, I didn't know that there's money like this out there, now I'm gonna look for that. So our step two is just kind of, it's financing college 101, but we have a really cool spreadsheet in there and parents should do this anyway, where we walk them through figuring out what's the true cost of college and walking your student through actually, okay, so based on that, if we borrow this and you go into this career field, what's your disposable income when you get out of college based on your loan payment?
00:29:09
Speaker
Can we get an amen to that? That should be mandatory. Oh my gosh. When parents message me, they're like freaking out because their student is about to choose the worst option. I say, you know what to do. Take them through that calculator. And we've had students totally change their mind because they're like, wait a minute. You mean when I work, I'm not going to get a single penny of my money to spend on what I want to spend it on?
00:29:32
Speaker
edify this story. So we do some time with some college kids actually in high school. Yeah. High school. Yeah. Sorry. High school kids. Um, and we did this exact exercise with the classroom and we took, Brian, you can probably give a little bit more detail than I can, but there was a girl in the front and we're like, all right, who wants to be the Guinea pig? Where do you want to go to college? So Brian, take it away. But I love this story because it's exactly what this, this little program is.
00:29:58
Speaker
Go ahead. Yeah, we did the same thing and she wanted to go to Stanford and, you know, really great student, you know, sweet girl. And she wanted to be a nurse. And when we walked her through it, we kind of walked her through the numbers. How much is this going to cost just to get through Stanford? I think it was like 200 grand.
00:30:13
Speaker
And then that didn't even factor living expenses, travel, spring break, yada, yada, yada. But we did ask her, do you want to get scholarships? We tried to get as much information as possible. And this is all arbitrary. She didn't know, but she was just kind of ad-libbing. And then we kind of just generally said, let's just say you borrowed a quarter million dollars and did a basic principle and interest payment. And then, okay, now you got a rent. Now you need your cell phone, car payment, gas, food. She had $50 left.
00:30:42
Speaker
She had $50. I don't even think that she did factor in food. Right. That was like, listen, and then at the end of it, because you could tell she was just deflated. We were like, listen, we are not trying to say that you can't go to California, have a great time. We're just saying do it different. So you're not living with your parents after the four years of Stanford. Think about this differently.
00:31:03
Speaker
And then walking her through, well, what if you went to school here and visited out there, you know, to figure out where you want to live and do those things, but you're getting your degree here and you're, you know, because Midwestern, you know, we're in the Midwest, you know, we're known for having good work ethic and those different things. And, you know, you could get your degree here and move out there without all this debt and be earning those wages, but not spending the money to get the degree out there.
00:31:28
Speaker
And so all these things are solutions. But if your will is to go to Stanford and have that degree on the wall, then let's figure it out. And then I think what we're so excited is because we've told so many kids and so many families, don't put 100 or 200 grand away for college. Because what are you teaching your children?
00:31:50
Speaker
And I want to go back to kind of the, the miss or the blocks. I think another major block is that most parents are willing to scratch the check or co-sign the loan or throw their money in and say, Oh, whatever you need, you know, I'll pay for it. And so the kids don't have any impetus to put any skin in the game. Right. And that's why we're seeing these students change their degree three to five times and graduate over five to six years. Cause they have no idea what they want to do. And someone's financing the check. They have no idea.
00:32:19
Speaker
how much this is going to cost on the back end, because I'm going to say it again, this is predatory lending. And one of the things that we talk about and we've written in articles and our other podcasts is you as the parent have to shut your kid off.
00:32:34
Speaker
Debt is not an option. Protect your children. Yes, protect your children. And we didn't know, our parents didn't know back then, but we know now. And I think why I'm so excited to have you on the show and to partner with you, Jocelyn, is because you have a system and you have something that families can latch onto. And it's very affordable, very affordable, especially when you look at how much this is going to cost.
00:32:57
Speaker
and protect your children and lead them that you're not going to go into a $50,000 to $100,000 in debt to find yourself. It doesn't make any sense and the kids have to have some skin in the game to make this work. And I think you have a system that really facilitates that.
00:33:18
Speaker
Well, and you know, I had one family that, uh, they made an error and they were going to NYU and had they have submitted the right stuff, his student would have needed to borrow maybe like 20,000 a year or something, but because they didn't do it, they now needed like $200,000 to borrow and someone sent them my way. They said, can you help? And, uh, she said,
00:33:41
Speaker
Honestly, I talked to him. I said, you should look at a different school. But he said, I'm going to make his dreams happen. And I'm going to pay regardless, but it would be great to get scholarships. And I immediately said to her, I go, I guarantee you, they're not going to get a penny. And she's like, what? No, they're ready. They want to do this. I said, he already told his kid, he will pay
00:34:00
Speaker
if he has to. There's no skin in the game. There's no hunger there. There's no fire. And so this student, and sure enough, I sent them all these resources, not a peep back. They didn't take any action. And I really was not surprised because you do, you've got to have some skin in the game. And that's what happened with me. My parents sat me down and said, Hey, you're on your own. Figure it out. We're here to support you, but financially we can't.
00:34:24
Speaker
And so, and we've had one mom actually, we have an interview that's just amazing. I think I cry in it, but she said to her, investing in something like this was her way of paying for college. She knew she couldn't pay for college, but she could at least invest in, and not even necessarily the, of course you can get a program, but also just the time she sits down. So one thing that we do with students is scholarship Sundays. So she does every Sunday, she makes some snacks, sits down with her daughter.
00:34:54
Speaker
and they work on some applications together.
Success Stories and Financial Flexibility
00:34:57
Speaker
She does the searching, her daughter does the applying, they really tag team it. Her daughter now has received over half a million dollars in offers from schools. And they're now bringing in external scholarships to help make it a free ride. So that's her mom's way of paying, right? It's tag teaming. Right. I want to touch on this because it was in your bio and it's something I've been thinking about and you kind of, I think this is a perfect segue.
00:35:21
Speaker
Let's just say the total ticket price for all this, one of my children, 150 grand, but you go out through your system and they get 500 grand. Can you walk our listeners through, how does the overage work? Is it just scholarship dependent where the money comes from? Can you get paid to go to college beyond just your expenses? How does that work? That's a great question.
00:35:43
Speaker
I literally received an average check every semester. Now, the way they do it is each university has a calculation called the cost of attendance. The cost of attendance is not just tuition. It's everything that they expect you to have to spend. It's room and board, it's fees, it's books, it's transportation, whatever. That number is obviously way higher than tuition. In fact, my tuition was less than half my cost my freshman year.
00:36:12
Speaker
So a lot of students will get a free tuition scholarship and they'll say, I got a free ride. But I always back them up and I'm like, congratulations, that's a great step in the right direction, but actually you probably got like 50% if that. So it is important to know that there's a lot of costs outside of that. So for me, what happened was all of my scholarship money went to my university and then you click pay bill.
00:36:34
Speaker
And then if the amount of money you've received in your account or towards your account is higher than your bill, then your university cuts a check for the remaining amount.
00:36:44
Speaker
Now, it does get hairy if you get way far in excess. So the $500,000 is because they have different offers from different schools. So that's the accumulation of different universities. Okay. So I do want to say that. But when you do get... I've had other students that also like me got to an average check. So they will allow you to get up to that cost of attendance and they'll cut the money.
00:37:06
Speaker
they'll cut the check for the remaining amount. If you get over the cost of attendance, that's when things can get a little fuzzy because they can technically take out government money if you have excess. So they'll say, okay, well, clearly you have extra money, so we don't need to give you these loans. And that's one thing I want to say to families. If they do get in that situation, they legally have to take away from loan balances first before taking away any debt-free money that they gave you. So I do want to just say that families are protected in that way.
00:37:36
Speaker
Bad problem to have though. Let's write really right you you really have to be in a sitting pretty to get to this situation And it's also great. You can talk to universities and say if my student gets as much money What are you gonna do and some schools say yeah? We'll take stuff away where other schools say no and for me that school that I'll take money away just got eliminated right because that means
00:37:57
Speaker
Like that just, you just tied my hands for four years from a potentially, I have one, one student, he got over 30 grand in excess money. It paid for their wedding when they, when he graduated college. Yeah. He still had a side job and he was able to save up because that's an education right there. I want to speak to the families right now, Jocelyn, you've kind of alluded to it. The family's like their son and daughter, whatever they're going into college right now.
00:38:26
Speaker
I don't even care if you're a senior and you have one semester left or maybe you even graduated. Like speak to these people that are in it and like, it's not too late. If you got 30, $40,000 of student loans already banked because you didn't know better, but you're just hearing this or you're just meeting Jocelyn's program, speak to those people of like, no, it's not too late.
00:38:49
Speaker
It's not. I'm going to first start off with a quick story and then I'm going to give you some very quick action items where they can find some money potentially. I had a student that found us and she was already a freshman in college and had to borrow nine grand for their first year.
00:39:07
Speaker
By sophomore year, after implementing strategies and applying for scholarships and stuff, she broke even. By junior year, she received an overage check. By senior year, she received an even larger overage check, which meant they could take that overage check and pay off the student loan balance from freshman year.
00:39:24
Speaker
So you, and that's one of the biggest things people think, well, one senior year is done. What's done is done. This is how we, this is how we have to pay for freshman year. This is the next four years. That's not the case. So my final check, my final scholarship check, I cashed on the way home from college graduation.
00:39:40
Speaker
It was a cash award and it was like 500 bucks. It wasn't huge, but still I was applying all the way through college, all the way through study abroad. I was getting money more and more. So it's never too late that said, but if they are already in college, just to give them a few quick places they can look.
00:39:58
Speaker
Most students already looked at admissions when they applied to see what money they could get based on their stats and stuff, and they went to the financial aid department. Those are the first two lines of defense. But a lot of students don't realize that their specific education department also has money. For example, I was in the business school. Freshman year in college, I went into the advising office and I said, hey, do you guys have any scholarships specifically for business students?
00:40:23
Speaker
And they said, actually, yes, and we get very few applicants. Here you go. And it was somehow still a paper application, which was not very innovative for a business school. But I applied and I won, I think, maybe $1,800 the first year and then it kept growing. You had to reapply each year, but I got a larger and larger amount each year.
00:40:42
Speaker
So that was my specific department and I was already at the college. So that's a great place to look. The other great place to look is in your college neighborhood, your town, city, wherever you are, you can look at local community foundations. You can look at local grocery stores, local rotary clubs. You can get a scholarship because you now live there.
00:41:05
Speaker
you can also still get scholarships from your local sources back where you're from because it's still permanent, your permanent address. So we can actually kind of double dip and look in both places and see if we're eligible for money. That's so good. Okay. People are, I'm in it. I'm in. Where do I need to go? Right. So when you go to this uncommonwealth.com slash scholarships, what is the prices they're going to get? What kind of decisions do they have to make? That kind of stuff.
00:41:32
Speaker
So what I'm going to do is I want to give first a free webinar. It goes in much more detail about the steps, the six steps to the scholarships. I show, we didn't get much time to talk about where to find them. So that webinar, I go in depth showing you how I use, actually I use Google. I avoid the search engines that most people go to. People always ask like,
00:41:53
Speaker
fast web and we don't use those. That's where everyone goes. So we have a unique method. So I'm going to give you guys a link to that free webinar. So I suggest starting there. And then if you decide to join us, our course, we have an online course that is... We're actually discussing raising the prices because our families have gotten so much money. The return is just ridiculous. But as of right now, it's $497.
00:42:17
Speaker
So for 497, you get an entire year's access. You get our Facebook group. We do two Q&As at least per month, where we have just a handful of students. You can ask questions. Also, obviously ask questions anytime in the Facebook group. You get step-by-step support and tools and videos and trainings. But also, we have cheat sheets. We have done-for-you thank-you letters and resume templates. It's just really this kit. I always say,
00:42:43
Speaker
We have SAT prep, right? We have ACT prep. It teaches us the skills to be better at the ACTs and SATs. This is the same thing for scholarships. It's giving them the skill sets rather than having to reinvent the wheel and figure it out like I did to increase their chances of winning. So again, yeah, our course is 497 for a year. And if you want after that, 497. And it's worth every penny and you'd probably be doubling your price because if you get one scholarship for 5005,000,
00:43:11
Speaker
And she teaches you how to shave 5,000 off the cost. You just had 20 X on your money.
00:43:16
Speaker
You're not going to find a return like that looking at these expenses anywhere else. You know, I mean, that's, you've got to spend money to figure this stuff out. And the other thing is, is like most families are behind the eight ball. Honestly, from planning standpoint, it's kind of like a freight train headed down the tracks and no one's in charge. Like the parents kind of want to be in charge, but the kids kind of want to be in charge, but like no one's leading.
00:43:43
Speaker
And the kids don't know how to lead themselves through this decision. You know, you are probably unique in the sense of like, oh, OK, it's now on me. Like, yes, your parents transferred the the ownership. I want to cast a little vision here. You know, we heard in our country and a lot a lot of families is like, well, I want my kids to be the first to go to college.
00:44:01
Speaker
I think we're largely past that now because, you know, college has been beaten into us for 20 to 30 years. I want families to stand up and say we're not going to pay for college the way they're telling us to pay for it. We're going to be a family that has someone else pay for you to go to college. Be a rebel.
00:44:19
Speaker
Be a rebel, be uncommon, and just like, we're not going to attach a debt noose around our kid's neck to figure out where they're going to be at in life because that is the worst thing you can do. Your kid comes out with a six-figure debt around their neck. They're going to be trapped into a job that they may or may not like, probably not like, and it's going to be hard to dig out of that. And if something goes wrong and you cosign and you're talking about, you're on the hook for that now.
00:44:47
Speaker
This is just a massive problem. It's sickening to me because it's just like these companies that are lending this money are making so much money. They've all been convicted of fraud. All of them are being convicted of fraud because people think they're overpaying and paying principal on their loans. No, you're just prepaying the next payment. It's not going to principal.
00:45:10
Speaker
And so you've like, there's just so many layers to this that have entrapped so many people. And I just thank you for Jocelyn for sharing these resources with us, building the business that you have, building the system, because this is a systemic problem in our country. And like we have to talk about it and equip people to not fall into this.
00:45:30
Speaker
I feel like we could talk about this all day. So Jocelyn, how can our listeners hear more about you and just find out more about this if this is where they're going? But I have a feeling they're totally locked in and totally sold themselves because I've sold myself.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll make sure that we get all of these free resources. And that way, you know, at least get your feet wet, take some of the steps and see if you actually uncover some scholarships that your student can apply to and then try to get their buy-in. I cover the myths in the webinar, so go through that. So we'll share that. We also offer, we have a ton of blogs. Every week we release a new blog post. I do a bunch of free Facebook Lives.
00:46:08
Speaker
So just start following us and start getting your feet wet. I've had some families that have been following us for years and slowly implementing the suggestions. Of course, we'd love for you to do it all right now and just dive straight in. But realistically, like you guys said, we're kind of laying tracks as the train is going, right? So even just small action steps can make a big difference. And like I said, it's never too late.
00:46:32
Speaker
So let's just get started now, see what we can do. And honestly, once they get that first win, it kind of becomes addicting and then they do really take the reins. So just get started. uncommonwealths.com slash scholarships. We'll make sure that everything's linked there. That's so good. Jocelyn, thank you so much for your time. You have been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I've been your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Until next time, go be uncommon. Thanks, everybody.
00:46:59
Speaker
That's all for this episode of The Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.