00:00I realized there was all this money looking for students, and then students are looking for that money, but they can't find each other.
00:06There are over $100 million at least of aid that goes unclaimed every year simply because students don't know it exists.
00:12Music
00:30Scholarly is a mobile and web app that instantly helps students find scholarships or college,
00:34and we're working on a few projects, one of which actually will be a product that students and graduates can use to pay off their student loans.
00:42Music
01:00I was homeless in high school. My mom lost her job because I was going to college right during the peak of the recession, so 2009, 2010.
01:07So it was something that was, it was really tough. I had to either not go to college at all in that case or find the money I needed.
01:15I just started applying for scholarships. I applied for several hundred of them, where I ended up getting about $1.3 million scholarship to pay for college.
01:23But that took me about like eight months to just find the opportunities I wanted to go to get.
01:29I realized there was all this money looking for students, and then students are looking for that money, but they can't find each other.
01:34Music
01:42Most colleges are for-profit institutions. It's creating this huge opportunity gap where most students, especially students of color, people who are poor,
01:49or even at this point middle-class students, they can't go to college. They can't afford it.
01:53College has been promoted and has been this societal stamp of approval for being qualified to get a job.
01:59And because the price tag is so high, ultimately people that are poor are not able to, like in my case, we're not able to break that cycle of poverty in our families.
02:10And college for some people is not only that economic opportunity, but sometimes the only way to remove yourself from a bad environment in some students' cases.
02:18Music
Comments