College students’ financial aid application will be made easier thanks to a new Facebook application created to ease the applicationprocess, according to an article in Fox Business.
Connect Fund, a Facebook application created by 24-year-old Devin Valencia, was designed to help students find applicable scholarships, grants and loans based on their demographic already posted on Facebook.
The application will include tools matching scholarships with the specific Facebook user based on their general information, school they insert on their information page and interests.
Along with scholarship information the application will educate students on the process of applying for loans and give a step-by-step tutorial of important processes such as paying back loans.
Former president Bill Clinton announced Valencia, a recent graduate of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, as the winner of the “Get Schooled” College Affordability Challenge at the 2011 Global Initiative University, according to a CollegeBoard press release. The application was created to simplify the college financial aid process as part of the national competition.
“A college degree is not just critical, it is essential to America’s economic future, and it’s important that we continue to find ways to harness the power of technology to close the educational opportunity gap,” Clinton said in the press release.
Christina Manian, a freshman at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said that the app is a great tool for students coming into college, particularly private institutions.
“I think that it’s really important that kids see the scholarship opportunities, especially for private schools because it will help [them] get to a better place,” Manian said.
After Valencia’s app was chosen, she worked with Frog Design to create the Facebook application. MTV and CollegeBoard are choosing an interactive agency to build the tool, allowing for students to begin applying for scholarships for the coming school year.
“This Facebook application can take away some of the pressure and make a process a lot easier if it is searching the demographic for you–going by your interests, that can help facilitate the process,” said SAR sophomore Eric Levine.
Financial worries fall heavily on parents of students as well as the students applying to college, Manian said.
“Paying for college is a stress for all parents I feel like. They’re always looking for ways to decrease the cost. I know my dad handled the whole financial thing and I know he would have loved it if I could have helped him in anyway,” she said.
With both parents only attaining a high school education, Valencia was the first in her family to attend and graduate from college, according to the Fox Business article.
According to The Huffington Post, it is speculated that MTV, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and CollegeBoard intend to dedicate $100,000 toward getting the application up and running as soon as possible.
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