Helping Students Navigate the Journey to Paying for College
Whether students are looking to learn more about the FAFSA application process, searching for scholarships that match their profile, or requesting a transcript, they can find it all in one central spot in Xello.
Supporting students and their families through the college applications process can be overwhelming and time-consuming for everyone involved. While most students are somewhat prepared for the research and deadlines that come with applying to college, paying for college is often an after-thought.
This lack of foresight and planning can make paying for college feel stressful and out of reach, resulting in students foregoing their top college choices in favor of those within a lower price range. While the decision to opt for a more affordable college may be the right one, it’s important that students and their families understand and consider all financial aid opportunities available to them before making these difficult decisions.
With many parents having little insight into the range of financial aid options available and the steps required to qualify, students often rely heavily on the guidance and resources offered by their schools and counselors to navigate this complex yet essential step in the college-going journey.
Xello’s Family Portal helps bridge this gap, making it quick and simple for families to gain visibility into their children’s future goals and plans, helping support them on their journey to future-readiness.
Empower students and parents to make sound decisions with simple tools and resources
For most counselors, securing one-on-one time with every Senior to discuss college plans can be difficult. To help combat heavy caseloads and time constraints, it’s essential that schools find ways to empower their students and parents to make well-informed decisions by arming them with easily accessible tools and resources that support college planning.
How Xello Can Help
Applying to college can be a complicated process that fills many students with anxiety and uncertainty. We look at the college application process from end to end, and at each step we consider: How can we make this easier for everyone involved.
Our suite of College Planning tools aim to address this and include:
- Course Planner to help keep students on the right track
- Scattergrams to show students what it could take to get into their school of choice
- Scholarships Portal to ensure students have access to every opportunity possible to fund their education.
- Our partnership with Parchment that takes our college application tracker to the next level, allowing students to submit and track application documents to thousands of colleges and universities.
One central hub to access to all college-related tools and financial aid resources
Whether students are looking to learn more about the FAFSA application process, searching for scholarships that match their profile, or requesting a transcript for their school application – they can find it all in one central spot in Xello’s College Planning hub.
To learn more about their options when it comes to paying for college, students can click directly into a topic of interest under the Xello Knowledge Hub. The resources housed here are written by a team of content experts, vetted by educators, and designed to help instill confidence by serving content that’s short, straightforward, and easy for students to digest and understand.
Topics currently include FAFSA, Scholarships, and Grants, Loans, and Work-Study Programs – with more topics coming soon.
Scholarships
Xello Scholarships simplifies the process of finding and applying for scholarships for students, empowering them to discover thousands of tailored opportunities that match their unique needs. User-friendly features enable students to create personalized scholarship profiles, efficiently sort through matches, and track opportunities they’re interested in pursuing.
From national awards to school-added opportunities, Scholarships maximizes students’ chances of securing the financial aid they need to achieve their academic goals.
When a student clicks into a scholarship, they’ll land on the scholarship details page where they can review all the information to see if it’s a good match. If they’re interested in the scholarship, they can add it to their personal shortlist by clicking the Add button.
Once added to their shortlist, students can keep track of their progress by updating the status of their scholarships to indicate that they’ve applied and if they’ve won.
To enable students to view and search school-added scholarships, you will simply create and publish the scholarship pages from within the College Planning section of your educator tools. Clicking on the Scholarships tile, you will land on the scholarship listing page where you can add and manage all your local scholarships.
You can also:
- Manage school-added scholarships
- Add, delete, and update school-added scholarships through a robust form that helps students get matched based on their scholarship profiles
- See what scholarships have been added by your school or district
- Choose which scholarships are visible to your students
- Access Reporting: Saved scholarships, deadlines, and how many/which students have applied, and self-reported statuses (applied/won/not reported)
Adding a new scholarship is as simple as filling in a set of standard fields in a template and hitting Publish. Scholarship fields include details such as the award amount, deadline, number of awards, application requirements, criteria, and contact details. Once a scholarship is published, it will be visible and searchable by your students.
Once your school-added scholarships have been activated and students begin interacting with them, you can run reports to track how many students are interested in the various scholarships, how many have applied, and how many have won.
When clicking into one of the scholarships, you’ll see the list of students that have added the scholarship to their shortlist, the date it was added, and the current self-reported status (not applied yet, applied or won). You can then export the data, create a group from the applications, and send the group a message.
Ready to move your Scholarships into Xello?
Access the new Scholarships tile from your educator tools by clicking on Features in your left-hand navigation and then on College Planning. For step-by-step guidance on how to add and manage local scholarships, check out this Xello Support article.
You can also view your students’ saved scholarships through your educator tools, giving you insights into which scholarships your students are applying for and where you might guide them to other opportunities.
Want to learn more about Xello’s suite of College Planning tools?
Watch this refresher on how Xello can help you empower your US college-bound students to submit their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form, get caught up on what’s new for 2024/25 in this article, or visit Xello Support for more educator materials.
