California State University, Bakersfield students are constantly facing tuition hikes and additional fees that build up every quarter. One of the simplest ways to offset these costs is to attain scholarships which can help cover a significant portion of a typical student’s costs. But less than 10 percent of the current student population has received any awards from scholarships offered by CSUB. Why are there so few scholarship recipients on campus?
It turns out, the problem is students don’t apply.
Ron Radney, financial aid and scholarships director for CSUB, points out that only a fraction of the student body applies for scholarships. Radney mentions that CSUB “had more than 1,430 applicants,” but this figure means only one in six students are applying at all.
When entering the financial aid office, a board is plastered with scholarship fliers and information. One proudly states that over $2 million is awarded annually, and figures from Radney show that last year over $3 million was awarded and this year is on track to match, if not exceed that.
Efforts to involve students have been thorough. Nearly all students are emailed directly about scholarship information, posts on the CSUB Financial Aid & Scholarships’ Facebook page, presenting at New Student Orientations, advertising all across campus and several other methods of promoting scholarships can be found. Workshops are currently being offered by the office to walk students through the process of applying, but many seats are empty in these sessions.
Tanae McCall, scholarship coordinator & financial aid advisor for CSUB, says that around 20 students come to each workshop. CSUB also reaches out to local high schools and offers high school students a handful of scholarships that are specifically for incoming freshmen. After all of this advertising, “students still aren’t applying,” Radney states.
The application process itself is somewhat lengthy. McCall says students can expect to take about an hour on average to complete the application in the workshops.

However, the questions are all basic and many are as simple as choosing yes or no.
After completion, an applicant will be shown a list of scholarships that seem right for them to apply to, and in some cases they will be put into a pool for scholarships that are not listed, but will be notified if they do win the award.
There are over 250 scholarships available as of this writing, meaning few students will be unable to find something they qualify for.
So why are students not applying?
When asked about scholarships, Gizelle Mangalindan, one of ASI’s directors, smiled. “I wouldn’t think about [scholarships] because my parents pay for [college],” said Mangalinda, a director for ASI.
Samantha Sales, also an ASI director, mentioned having no real need for the money, even though both students agreed that it would be nice to have. “I want to attend the scholarship workshop first,” she adds.
Some students might be concerned that when applying for scholarships, they lose out on their financial aid award.
Radney was careful to state that while in some cases a scholarship can cause a student to have loans reduced, these are extremely rare cases for scholarships that are paying significant amounts of money.
The typical student will not face any issue in exceeding the estimated need that is used as a guideline for determining aid.
He also points out that there are two types of scholarships available: need and merit based.
Need scholarships require a completed Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and a gap between cost of attendance and expected family contribution. [email protected].
A merit scholarship has no FAFSA or other financial requirement, but usually have an academic requirement such as minimum GPA.
The merit scholarships are perfect for students who already have their college attendance paid for, but would like extra money to work with.
Still with all this money floating around Radney says that “not as many students are applying as we would like to see.”