scholarship question

That depends on how much you can afford to pay. Request what you can’t afford.

There are so many organizations that give scholarship money for seminary. I raised $23,730 for seminary and even though I have had to switch seminaries, I have still found ways to get scholarships for the seminary I am at now. The key thing is to always ask your; school, rabbi, federation, and search online (there are so many online like the alissa flatlow one and others like that that you can’t find anywhere else but online).

Littlemiss: The answer to your question will be different depending on what community you live in. For me, although it was really hard to write all the essays, I have a very unique background because I went to public school, did ncsy, became a baal teshuva, transferred to a local bais yaakov, and my family isn’t so wealthy. So depending on your background and where you live, it might not be possible to get a full scholarship. However, the key thing is to search online.

If you know that you are going to a Jewish College after your year in seminary, then I do not recommend participating in an Israel experience program unless fafsa allows you to get grants instead of loans/ nothing. Otherwise, you could be spending $2,000 on a program for a transcript to be in debt.

Also, most seminaries have some sort of scholarship or work study fund that can help a bit as well.

Nanny: I was never a straight a student, and I even got a D in a class and a bunch of C on my transcript and although that meant I could not apply for the merit scholarship from my federation, people that ask you to send in a transcript usually also look at other factors such as essays, and possibly interviews- if applicable.

There are also scholarships that I don’t know about for other communities because I live in the midwest, but there are probably funds available from places that have paper applications as well.

How do I get through to torah metzion?!

In addition to writing tons of essays (for me, writing is easier than having interviews), I went to a number of rabbis in my community, and I also set up a website, and constantly spoke about how I needed to raise so much money, and then people suggested that I go to a variety of places based on what I needed, I often would ask someone to list all the places that they thought of for getting scholarships from (I did this later on in the year) and that way, I made sure I covered all my bases (which towards the end of the year, I already got money from all the places most people seemed to mention), and then I would ask if they could think of any other places, and then I got some “last resort” suggestions, and then worked on those. Basically, fundraising that amount of money while still in high school is a pretty big undertaking, I would say that I lost a ton of sleep over it, and also felt like during that time, it was all I could think about (I am very driven when it comes to meeting goals like that, which helped a lot, but also stressed me a bit as well). I also davened a ton and made sure to check in with people every once in a while to make sure I was on the top of their list of people who needed money.

Like the school I went to in 12th grade was a bais yaakov, so I could not use the internet at school, yet I had special permission to bring my laptop to school to take notes, and on days I got out earlier than everyone else (like a friday), I would occasionally go somewhere else (a Jewish organization) that would let me use their wifi, and I told them I wanted to use their wifi to search for seminary related information, and then they saw that I was serious, and helped me. Its all about strategic planning. An army will lose a war if they don’t have a strategy for the battlefield, so to, you can’t do this alone, and you need to rally up people to support you.

Oorah

NCSY (Regional, National, Torah Fund)

Kupat Ha’ir

The rest of them were limited to people who live in my community. I don’t live in New York.

pell is a grant you get depending on what fafsa decides you deserve to get from the government.

If I apply to online scholarship programs, do I also need to be enrolled in a collage (or get collage credits through the seminary) in order to receive scholarships from types of programs like scholarshipexperts.com (they say they are collage scholarships but could seminary be considered my first year of collage?) thanks… sorry it my thoughts aren’t so clear…

since you plan on going to E”Y, you aren’t eligible because you are going abroad.

It isn’t possible at all. Unless you apply for seminary scholarships (FAFSA is the only exception)

If you go through a college (Touro, Stern, TI, and one more whose name I don’t remember right now) then you can use college scholarships. Otherwise, you need scholarships that are specifically for seminary/a year abroad.