By Kailee Austin

RaiseMe… RaiseWhat??? Have you ever heard of RaiseMe or even wondered what it was? Well, here is your answer! According to the company itself, “RaiseMe is a platform that helps 9-12th grade students prepare for college by earning scholarships for their achievements in high school.” These achievements range from volunteer hours, sports, clubs, and so much more. Hundreds of colleges are partnered with RaiseMe to give high school students micro-scholarships. Micro-Scholarships are an amount of money given to high school students based on their individual achievements.

Don’t be scared though. “It’s so easy to use RaiseMe,” says senior Maya Kostov. “All you have to do is put in your grades for high school, extracurricular activities, community service, any work experience, test scores, honors/awards, college readiness, and art and media. You do not have to fill out all of these, but the more you put, the more money you’ll get. After that, all you do is search up a school, follow them, and the app will tell you that you have updated earnings.

“If you have a particular school you want to go to, RaiseMe allows you to click on that school and see specifically which awards the school gives money for. Naturally, not all schools have a partnership with RaiseMe but a lot do.”

It is good to get a head start, so you freshman and sophomores should really look more into it! Noah Frazier, senior, also states that, “It’s definitely not hard to use RaiseMe. If you don’t want to keep track of another password, you can log in with Google using your personal or school email. The layout is very simple and you don’t run into any problems with entering your information.”

Maya Kostov also mentions that, “If you are uncertain where you want to go for college, RaiseMe can help you narrow it down based on size, location, major, and more. On the other hand, if you do know exactly where you want to go and that school is partnered with RaiseMe, the app can help you earn more money for it!”

Even though not all schools are partnered with RaiseMe, it really is a great way to learn about campuses you have never heard of or even ones you are interested in. There are a lot more colleges out there than we realize. Look into them…one of them could be your future college!

Noah Frazier said, “I actually used RaiseMe to research the University of Rochester in upstate New York, even though it doesn’t award scholarships on RaiseMe! Even when schools don’t award anything, you can find videos and pictures of the campus and detailed information about a school’s cost, popular majors, location, and a ton of other useful statistics. It can be used for much more than just earning scholarships.” This goes to show what a great resource RaiseMe can be.

Are you wondering what types of scholarships students actually get from these? Here is what Maya had to say about that: “The schools giving me the most money from RaiseMe are Cornell College, Colby-Sawyer College, Washington College, and Washington and Jefferson College. All of those schools gave me around $35,000 per year to attend, which makes the cost virtually the same as in-state tuition. I applied to all of these schools and got in! I have a ton more that are giving me $25,000 per year so don’t be put off by the term ‘micro-scholarship’. Once you input everything, these are not small at all! These schools also give you more merit money once you apply!”

Once again, this cannot be stressed enough, there are so many possibilities that can come through RaiseMe, and you’ll get money from so many colleges! One last thing Maya had mentioned was that, “As someone who has always wanted to go out of state for college, this is a really easy way to narrow it down and makes out of state college more affordable,” which is great for all the students who are interested in out of state!

Noah Frazier explained that, “Of those [colleges] that I follow, Cornell College in Iowa would offer me at least $92,430 if I applied there. That’s $23,108 per year, which would reduce their annual tuition and fees by more than half. All I did was record my grades, test scores, and some activities. It honestly didn’t seem real when I first started using it because I was getting huge awards for very little extra effort.” That is amazing!!