Get an Opportunity for Scholarships!!!

by Chikako Kakihira

P.T.K. is a helpful organization for students, who attend a community college, when they face financial difficulties, such as a raise in the rent, an inability to buy a Metro Card, layoffs and emergency expenses. Thus, financial crisis is an obstacle for students, who are serious about achieving their academic goals, one of which is to obtain the university degree within a given period. In my opinion, no student should be denied the opportunity to his/her career. To make our lives easier, it is important to get a university degree because studies show that students who received the bachelor’s degree could earn salaries as almost one and a half times as those who only received the associate’s degree.

One of the benefits of P.T.K. is the scholarships it offers. Members are able to apply for over 37 million dollars in transfer scholarship available only to members. For students like me, who hope to transfer to a four- year college, that means an average transfer scholarship amount of $2,500 annually. To be a scholarship recipient, one of the officer of the P.T.K. clarifies the two types of scholarships available to members.

The first is an automatic transfer scholarship, where, if the students can attend certain universities outside of the CUNY system, they will be offered some amount of money as a scholarship. Applicants can ask their transfer institutions about these PTK Transfer scholarships or use CollegeFish.org (a benefit for all PTK members) to search for four- year institutions that offer Phi Theta Kappa scholarships.

Also, PTK has a Spring Common Application for scholarships which apply to the applicant’s tuition if he/she is staying at your two-year institution the following academic year. The Fall Common Application offers scholarships which, if won, will go with the applicant to his/her chosen transfer institution. Both rounds of these scholarship applications rely on PTK involvement with the chapter. 

The second is the All-USA scholarship, which is open to all students and is advertised to students in the fall semester. There is an internal deadline to submit this application, the application goes through a selection committee and of all applications submitted at LaGCC, Only 2 students are selected as LaGCC’s nominees for this scholarships. The applicants who miss the internal deadline cannot apply for this scholarship. If they have joined the PTK after the Fall Common application closes (in December) and are graduating in June, the only scholarships available to them through PTK are the PTK transfer scholarships offered by each institution (the first type of scholarship described above.)

Therefore, in order not to miss the opportunity to apply for these scholarships, it is necessary to get involved in the activities by PTK members, and to maintain a high GPA. The applicants must also find a scholarship that is applicable to their academic plan.