Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums High School Raise.me for scholarships?

One of the colleges DS applied to referred to Raise.me scholarships. Apparently if you "follow" a school (one or several) on the Raise.me website, you can enter your grades and achievements and the school is committed to giving scholarship dollars based on them, IF you end up applying and are accepted. But you have to sign up first; since DS is a 2nd semester senior and has made all his applications, it is too late for him I suppose.

The odd thing is, you have to register with the website just to see the participating schools and how it all works. I don't like that.

Has anyone had any experience with Raise.me?

I don't like that "data collection" aspect either.

I do not have experience with that website, but I took a look at it and these are my impressions:

1) The Contact webpage does not have a phone number or a street address.

2) The About webpage does not state that it is a 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) non-profit or not-for-profit.
The About webpage states these are are 'micro-scholarships'.

3) Whois describes Raise.me as being registered in Panama.

4) The Privacy Policy webpage and Terms of Use webpage state that
- your information may be shared with third parties,
- you may or may not be able to edit/delete information,
- students under 18 are supposed to have parental approval to use the website and divulge personal information including financial information.

5) The Raise.me home page links to an article from NYT dated Feb 20, 2016 which describes Raise.me as a start-up in San Francisco. The article states, in part: "The hope is that, by highlighting and rewarding certain academic and extracurricular activities, Raise.me helps level the college playing — and paying — field for low-income students who may not receive the same kind of parental advice at home as their higher-income peers."

6) After reading the Raise.me website and links to external websites (LinkedIn, facebook, news articles), it is my understanding that students who would receive money from this program would receive the similar amount directly from their college financial aid office... without the students' data being broadly disseminated for commercial purposes.

Wow, good sleuthing, indigo. And yet, one of the schools DS applied to actually mentions it in a communication. (Waiting for their announcement letter any day now!) Curiouser and curiouser. I'm going to check with our high school scholarship resource office and will report back.

Indeed! This link describes that "Raise.me charges participating institutions annual fees of $4,000 to $20,000."

Some may wonder whether that fee may depend, in part, on how many students may be referred to Raise.me... I believe the student data is regarded as an "asset" to be inventoried and sold... and I further believe that the data collection is the REAL business of this organization.

A few more links to sources of information, roughly in order by date:
1- Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition & Conference, 2013 finalists
2- Preston Silverman, Raise.me cofounder, on crunchbase
3- Raise.me, on crunchbase
4- EdSurge edtech review of Raise
5- Gigaom article, May 16, 2013
6- Technically article, Dec 04, 2014
7- CNN Money Tech article, Sept 18, 2015
8- Here and Now article, Nov 4, 2015
9- Business Insider article, Jan 19, 2016: shows sample student profile
10- crunch article, June 10, 2016: "Scholarships are the new sweepstakes"

This snippet from the CNN article may be of interest: Meanwhile, information at the linked Milken-Penn GSE and Technically articles causes me to wonder:
Was University of Pennsylvania possibly the college which mentioned Raise.me to your son?

The EdSurge article mentioned that colleges are charged $4,000 - $20,000 based on the college's involvement with the program. This is sufficiently nebulous as to mean anything... including possibly a sliding fee scale depending upon the number of students referred to Raise.me.