Staff Member

The last day to achieve priority filing, which gives students the opportunity to be considered first for CSU Bakersfield scholarships, has arrived.
The official priority deadline is March 2.
CSUB offers millions of dollars in scholarships to eligible students each year. Students who have already filed their applications will be given first consideration during the selection process. However, students are still encouraged to apply after this date.
“This year we disbursed out, so far, about $2.8 million,” said Chad Morris, interim director in the office of financial aid and scholarships at CSUB. “Last year we did a total of $3.2 million.”
That amount includes endowments, external scholarships and athletic scholarships.
“The endowments are considered our in base,” said Tanae McCall, who is the academic scholarship coordinator at CSUB. “Those are our internal CSUB scholarships from donors.”
Endowments are donations that are placed in interest-bearing accounts.
“How much interest they bear determines how much we disperse out for them,” said Morris.
External scholarships are donations given by a group or individual and provide a student with scholarship help for that year.
Athletic scholarships take up the bulk of the total amount awarded to students each year.
Student athletes are sometimes offered scholarships by several schools and the student is given the opportunity to pick what works best for them. They do, however, have to complete renewal paperwork each year, according to junior environmental management student Ariana Mariscal.
Mariscal is a cross-country and track and field athlete at CSUB.
“Here at CSUB my coach, she just like realized that she really did want me to participate here at CSUB, so she gave me a really reasonable scholarship and I thought that it was the best offer I should take compared to other offers I had received,” said Mariscal.
“Of that [$2.8 million] about $420,000 were our endowment scholarships,” said Morris. The rest were external and athletic scholarships.
The internal scholarships are awarded to about 300 to 350 students. Many students receive more than one, according to McCall.
The donors of those internal scholarships set their own criteria to determine eligibility.
However, Morris said there are certain things that they can’t specify, like for a certain race or male or female.
“It’s got to be open for anyone to apply,” he said.
Scholarships that don’t get disbursed don’t get wasted.
According to Morris, most of the time, less than 4 percent of available scholarships aren’t awarded each year.
That 4 percent is a result of students not applying, not meeting criteria, or graduating before they were able to collect the remainder of the scholarship.
“That remainder amount doesn’t get lost,” Morris said. “It just rolls into the next year.”
Students don’t apply for different reasons.
Senior public relations major Justin Pool said  he wasn’t aware that CSUB offered scholarships.
He said he didn’t really need a scholarship since he gets financial aid and wasn’t aware they were easily accessible.
“It’s not that they don’t apply,” said McCall. “They actually probably start the application, (but) they don’t finish.”
This is why the financial aid and scholarship department started the workshops.
“Either they forget about it, stop, or they fear the essay,” said McCall.
Having to write an essay to be considered for a scholarship is something that stops many students.
“There was this one scholarship and I was going to apply for it,” said senior liberal studies major Laysha Morgan, “and it was like, ‘you have to write four essays and each topic has to be like three pages or more’ and the scholarship was only for like $250.”
It is important for students to be aware that not all scholarships will require this much work and there is help in applying for them if they attend the workshops hosted by the financial aid and scholarship department.
Over the past few years CSUB’s financial aid and scholarship department has been doing a lot to get the word out about available scholarships and the number of students being awarded scholarships has grown.
They give presentations at orientations and open houses. They hold the financial aid and scholarship workshops, run ads in The Runner, run a Facebook page and send emails out to students.
CSUB students have many resources available for them to help pay for college. The resources are also there to help you complete the process of applying for those scholarships.
“Just go for it,” said Mariscal. “Just apply for them.”