Cheryl Raby, a senior nursing and Spanish major, said that she came to know the meaning of "strapped for cash," when one semester her bank account balance dipped so low that her debit card was declined at a Wegman's chain.
With the checkout line backing up behind, she sorted through bags of groceries and made some tough decisions in order to reduce the total she saw flashing on the cashier's screen - while still trying to get enough to feed herself.
"It was embarrassing," said Raby.
Soon after, Rab decided she needed to apply for a little financial help - in the form of scholarships.
It may be possible for some UB students to avoid such ordeals by finding ways to apply for private scholarships and grants. One major resource for scholarship information is the Student Response Center's Web site at studentresponse.buffalo.edu. Here, students can navigate the web in search of scholarships from the Financial Aid page. The link to the Undergraduate Library's Scholarship Directory Page provides the titles and call numbers of invaluable reference books in addition to the URLs for many online databases.
Books like "Peterson's College Money Handbook," "Financial Aid for Asian Students," and "Foundation Grants to Individuals" are waiting on the shelves in the Undergraduate Library's reference section, clustered under call numbers beginning with LB2338.
"It was once one of our most popular areas, but the interest has diminished since so many of these materials are online," said Glendora Johnson-Cooper, a social sciences reference librarian at the UGL.
Johnson-Cooper encourages students to visit the reference desk if they need help targeting a suitable directory.
Though some students may skip directly to the bottom half of the UGL's Scholarship Directory page, which has hyperlinks for websites like www.fastweb.com and collegenet.com, which offer listings of scholarship contests tailored to the student's pursuits, Johnson-Cooper advises students to beware of information overload.
"The downside is that you get so much more to the point where it's almost a little unwieldy," said Johnson-Cooper.
Instead Johnson-Cooper said students should consider "taking a focused approach" by narrowing their searches to suit their fields since most grants and scholarships pertain to specific fields of research, professions, or specific ethnicities and genders.
"If you just plug in 'grants,' you're going to get a ton of stuff," she said. "But if you enter (for instance) 'grants for black women entering fields in journalism,' you'll get a more narrow list of results."
Computing Information and Technology (CIT) consultant and senior media study major Stacey-Ann Robinson said students should consider taking the time to set up an account with FastWeb for easy access to scholarship information for which they are eligible.
"When you sign up, they ask you your name, your school, your major, your interests, and based on that you receive a listing of scholarships, like writing contests if you're interested in writing," said Robinson.
With the information provided by browsers, the company sifts through its continuously updated database for contests for which the applicants might be suitable. FastWeb makes a profit by collecting demographic data and selling it to third parties, allowing companies to cross-reference, for instance, an applicant's ethnicity with how much time the applicant spends browsing a particular section of the site.
Another tool for scholarship research is www.collegenet.com, a website devoted to college applications and financial aid information.
Students can enter queries in CollegeNet's Mach25 database to gauge their chances of getting scholarships. For the spam-wary surfer, CollegeNet's Mach25 database boasts a lack of advertisements, along with a respect for the privacy of each student. They ask for a very basic, anonymous profile only if applicants first forego their keyword search.
Some students, like Pavan Neti, a senior computer science major, said that finding suitable scholarships for which they can apply might be impossible.
Neti believed he was he is not eligible for anything because of his status as an international student.
According to John J. Wood, director of communications in UB's Office of International Education, there are resources for students like Neti, though most of them originate in the student's country of citizenship.
"Increasingly, there are more and more loan programs in the home countries that help get them to the U.S.," said Wood.
When informed that there may be corporate or institutional scholarships he could apply for, Neti decided he was not as sure as before.
"Now you've raised a doubt in me actually," he said. "I'm going to go find out for myself."
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
