Schools
Brookfield High Senior Awarded CHET Advance Scholarship
More than $500,000 to be distributed to 200 Connecticut seniors.
State Treasurer Denise Nappier announced 200 high school seniors have been selected as recipients of the first annual CHET Advance Scholarship, including Brookfield’s Mustafa Sakhi.
Each student will receive a $2,500 grant to help put their college dreams within reach.
“CHET Advance Scholarship will help these students meet the ever-rising costs of higher education and allow them to spend less time worrying about how to pay for college and more time focused on getting into college and staying in college,” said Treasurer Nappier, Trustee for the Connecticut Higher Education Trust (CHET).
Winners were randomly selected from a pool of 3,635 applicants that hail from 85 public high schools, 10 parochial high schools and three independent high schools in Connecticut. Two of the winners are home-schooled students.
According to a report published last week by the College Board, Trends in College Pricing, while tuition and fees have increased at the lowest rates in “many years,” there has been a decline in federal aid.
“As a result, many students are facing larger increases in the prices they pay, even in the face of smaller increases in published prices,” the College Board said.
“Affordability continues to be a crucial concern for students and families,” said Treasurer Nappier. “We are far from making college accessible to all students. It is my hope that the CHET Advance Scholarship can fill the financial aid gap for 200 students toward meeting their academic potential.”
To be eligible, students must begin college no later than September 2015, and use the full $2,500 scholarship by June 30, 2016. Scholarship awards will be paid directly to students’ colleges starting in the fall of 2014.
To ensure the impartiality of the random drawings, International Scholarship and Tuition Services, which has more than 25 years of scholarship administration experience, set up and ran the selection process with oversight from TIAA-CREF.
Plans are underway to roll out the second phase of CHET Advance Scholarship during the next calendar year for younger students as well, with a portion of the scholarship winners chosen based on need and scholastic achievement. Altogether, CHET Advance Scholarship plans to distribute a total of more than $2 million during the next four years.
Based off of a press release.
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