Episode 11 – Finances for Success

Hello everyone.and welcome to sounds of success. My name is Christina I’m Phil. And today we are talking with Brian Dixon about financial aid. Yeah, Brian, he, well, he was the associate vice provost for student aid and affordability. Uh, he’s recently been promoted to vice provost for enrollment management and student success.

And he comes to us from Washington state university started at UT, uh, in February in the midst of the pandemic. So, uh, what an interesting, the vice-provost yeah, he’s, he’s, uh, he’s a mover and shaker doing big things. Um, so yeah, let’s, uh, let’s go ahead and chat with Brian. Hello welcome Brian. We’re so excited that you came to sit down and talk with us today.

Awesome. Glad to be here. Yeah. So I have an immediate question already. We all know that FAFSA opened up very, very recently within the last few weeks. So I tell students all the time, you know, make sure you fill out your FAFSA, make sure you fill out your FAFSA. And it kind of goes in one ear out the other basically, but why is.

Students fill out a FAFSA regardless of social economic status. Well, there’s a couple of good reasons. One of the things I think is really important about filling out the FAFSA, especially during, um, COVID this time that we’re in right now is we’re seeing lots of students and families experiencing financial difficulties that they have lost money.

You know, during the pandemic they’ve been laid off, they’ve experienced some of those kinds of things. And a lot of students and families who didn’t rely on financial aid before are now needing to rely on financial aid, to be able to cover books, cover those basic necessities. And so we’re just happy to kind of help students through that.

And we, we feel like if you fill out the FAFSA, the nuclease, you have an opportunity, um, to see what you’re going to qualify for, to become available. Even if some point throughout the year, you don’t anticipate needing something. You can quickly access resources, even if it’s something like alone. And so we encourage students to fill out a FAFSA for those who qualify for that.

And then also a task, um, for those who might be, um, internationals, but qualify as Texas residents. And so. Um, they should fill out the right application and we’ll help them if they have questions. Yeah. That’s an interesting point. I hadn’t thought about, you know, your financial situation changing mid school year, even.

Right. And how that could maybe qualify you for additional aid that you didn’t know you even had. Right. And the reason that that’s important is that the fastest based on two-year income. So the students who are filling out FAFSA is I just opened October 1st. Putting their income information from their 2019, um, tax information.

Well, things could have changed. I can’t imagine what changed. Yeah. There was, there was some sort of big, giant global pandemic rumor has it, a lot of people staying at home a lot of hard times y’all have heard about that. I think it’s called COVID right. And so, and so it’s not obvious when you fill out.

So that, you know, Hey, I’ve had a change in my situation and what should I do about that? Because what I’ve put on this paper, um, or this online form, doesn’t line up with my current reality. Yeah. I always think about like, uh, you know, I’m entering this data from last year, but really like, things are different or I changed jobs.

So how does financial aid account for that? Cause I know that I was wondering about that. Yeah. So the way the financial aid office accounts for that is we usually recommend that you contact us through our, our Texas one-stop and we’ll sort of talk you through the steps, understand the size of the change, the type of change so we can navigate through, but normally we’ll have you fill out an online form and we’ll collect some documentation and we’ll evaluate the impact.

And if there are changes to be made, then we use what’s called special circumstance or professional judgment. To make those adjustments to your FAFSA on your behalf. So you should fill out. Students should fill out FAFSA as according to their actual information for 2019, as it says on the form and then work with the financial aid office on their, on their specifics.

And if they qualify for more money, then we’ll go ahead and award those to them. And if they don’t, then we’ll talk them through what other options might be available to them, um, to help get them through. Where does that money? Okay. So, so money’s coming from a bunch of different sources right now. So we’re, um, we, we have traditional financial aid, um, right now, like grants and scholarships and loans that you’re familiar with.

But right now, one of the things we’re also dealing with is, is, um, her funds, which are the special allocations of student emergency funds. And, uh, some of the students going to UT right now, uh, received, um, some of these dollars through block grants, um, over $25 million. Current fall has been given out in the form of block grants to our students.

And then we just, as recently as Wednesday of this week, um, applied, um, opened up an application processed over 26,000 student to ask for additional assistance. So we are trying to work, um, to get out that information to our students. So all in total, 35,000 students, um, here at the university of Texas and receive emergency assistance just this fall on helping people recover from this pandemic and all the different challenges, paying for your housing, challenging covering food and just sort of making, making those ends meet.

So this has been a really an important time for the financial aid office to help students and families. Yeah. I talked a lot of students. Gotten a check or gotten some money and it’s helped out immensely. It’s it’s nice to hear some good things coming from, uh, folks experience with financial aid. Usually it’s a gripe, right?

Or like, oh, I didn’t get this approved in time or I didn’t get this form in time. It’s actually been kind of surprising for some, right. Like some people weren’t expecting that. Is this Ryan is this prank. I graduated in may of 2020. And I remember right before I graduated, we had some like emergency funds come out to students.

And when I got the email, I was like, this is a. And I will not be replying. I will not be clicking any sort of legs whatsoever. And then I think on, I was working on campus at the, uh, at the time on campus, I was working from home on campus and from my living room and I heard, um, some of the advisors talking about it and I was thinking, oh, maybe it’s not a scam.

So I always, I just kind of clicked on it really quickly. Next thing I knew there was money in my bank account and I. Kind of worried, like what if they take this back? What if they take this back? Absolutely. Absolutely. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve included all that information on our Texas one-stop page that explains about these, her funds.

It explains the criteria. Who’s getting them how they’re going about, and then also how to get in contact with us. And of course, in general, we don’t advise students to start clicking on links. From unfamiliar sources and emails to protect their identity and not entering their sensitive information in other places.

So we try to document things well to, to avoid any confusion. Wow. Well, I know it’s been a heavy lift for your team and the one-stop team over the last couple of years. And, um, I know, I appreciate it. I hope students appreciate it too. I know that, uh, it’s. It’s been a challenge working through the pandemic and the legislation that’s coming from Washington and how that money needs to be.

Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of great people working together and, you know, I mean, we all know the university pretty much shut down and people ran the university from there, from their own homes, right. For a long period of time to make sure that we could keep students, uh, moving forward and going through. So. It’s exciting to be to this point.

And, um, we’re continuing to advocate with the government to look at. Long-term not just temporary support, but long-term support for students. You probably have heard a lot of those conversations about free college and how’s that all gonna work. So we’re, we’re monitoring all of those situations to see what we can do to adjust and advocate, um, for the longterm needs beyond this year for students in their.

Yeah, selfishly, I got my eye on that public service loan forgiveness stuff that’s going on. So hopefully I get some good news for me too complicated right now, the process way too. It does look very complicated. I think I read somewhere that, um, the first group of people who. Qualified for complete loan forgiveness for the public loan forgiveness program, um, of the people that applied 96% of them were rejected.

It’s been a troubled program for a long time. Arbitrary reason. Hmm. There was one that was one of the staff members in the financial aid office who was sharing a story. He did get it approved. He ended up having to make over 87 communications. That’s right. That’s right. But he finally got it through, there were, there were certain payments that didn’t get credited properly and the wrong things went to the wrong place.

And it was, it was a very difficult, painful process because it was like, you just couldn’t figure out where things were wrong because there just wasn’t great messaging. And so I think that’s what Congress has really taken a look at and seeing what they can do to, to figure it out. But I would just encourage.

You know, students, if that’s something you’re looking at it, some of you qualify for it to be persistent and ask for help. Yeah. It feels like change is coming like with financial aid, right. It’s coming. It seems like maybe students of all socioeconomic status backgrounds should fill it out. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Keep your options open, right? Fill it out. See what you qualify for. If you’ve had changes in your family situation, certainly be in touch with us so that we can make sure that, um, your, your form accurately reflects your, your financial ability to pay. Well, you know, let’s talk about dates and deadlines.

Cause I think that those are things that really easily disqualify people from getting money that they could. So, um, I think the FAFSA’s available right now, right. And winter. So it opened and, and we encourage students to submit it by January 15th. And then with scholarships, we encourage, um, scholarship applications that, uh, continuing general scholarship application to be completed.

By March 15th. So those are two important dates to write down and make sure that students don’t miss those and that they fill those out. And one of the things I would say about scholarships is it’s, it’s pretty common for first year students to come in with lots of scholarships because, um, high school guidance, counselors, moms, and dads in a really like kind of pushed you and nudge you along.

And, and not all those scholarships were renewable and sort of forget to look for scholarships that sophomore year. And so I would say that’s a really. Important sort of pro tip to remember, to keep looking at scholarships, you know, beyond that first year of college to help pay for everything. Yeah. So there are a lot of scholarship opportunities available on campus, and I think you just brought it up that going into freshman year, students will have a lot of scholarships, but after that, There’s not that much out there or so we believe, and we know that that’s not true.

There’s a lot out there. What are resources that students should look into to look for these scholarships that are offered specifically for UT students or not specifically for UT students? Yeah. I th I think there’s a couple of good, there’s a couple of good resources out there to take a look at when you’re looking at scholarships.

I, I think one of those, again, is on our Texas one-stop, it’s called managing your costs. And there’s a section that says financial aid. And scholarships. And there was a link there and a tool called scholarship finder. Um, and so there are some abilities to do some filters there. And so, um, if a graduate student happened to be listening, there was a filter you could do for graduate student.

You can filter based on residency. The other place that I would say is, uh, most of the, most of the colleges, um, have their own, you know, depending on what your major is, have their own sets of scholarships and application process. You’ll normally find that on your colleges website. So those will be listed out there.

As well. And when you’re looking for outside scholarships, um, I think that, um, fast web, you know, continues to be fastweb.com continues to be one of my favorite sites, college board, um, dot com has a scholarship finder, uh, on there as well. I would say the big thing to be careful about when you’re applying for scholarships, especially scholarships outside the university is you want to make sure that you’re going to a legitimate source, right.

And that, yeah, you don’t want to, you don’t want to be ever paying. Apply for a scholarship and you don’t want to be entering sensitive information to someplace that yeah, of course, that could still, you’re still, you’re still your information. So you want to make sure legitimate source and, um, consistently you’ll see it.

You’ll see some of those there, some people are kind of popular scholarly. You might’ve seen that a couple of years ago that was on shark tank. And so that’s, that’s one of those, uh, that’s one of those scholarships searches that, um, is sort of growing a bit in popularity and. Mobile-friendly. Yeah, and I feel like that’s a question I get a lot from, from students who are here already.

Like how can I apply for scholarships? What are the opportunities for me? What’s the advice. And the advice I always give them is try to find scholarships that are. The specific to you as possible. Like the best possible scholarship I could apply for is like money for dudes named Phil Butler. Right? It’s like that scholarship doesn’t exist, but like the, the more honed in to who you are and what your identities are, what you’re trying to accomplish, like you’re trying to eliminate the competition, right?

If you’re applying for a national scholarship, you’re your competition is everyone in the country. And then same thing for the state. And then. Your college and then your major. So like the more specific you can get, I think that the better your chances are for that. Brian brought up college and majors having their own scholarships available.

A lot of times they’re small and people don’t really know that they exist or they’re like, oh, it’s only. A couple of hundred or like low in the thousands. So it doesn’t matter, but it matters a lot, you know? I mean like your rent, it goes towards rent. It can cover groceries, part of your tuition. Um, but $150 on the street, you would absolutely take it $50 on the street.

$50 on the street. No questions asked, right. Would you walk past a hundred dollar bill or I was just laying on the ground. I’m like, yeah, that seems like a lot of times I think that these scholarships, I mean, they require like a personal statement and maybe a letter of recommendation, but not that much more.

Um, so the way I like to explain it to my students is you spend an hour to two hours. Uh, personal statement. If you get the scholarship for a thousand dollars, you just got a thousand dollars for two hours of work. Um, so I like phrasing it like that, but I used to, I used to do that with my kids. I made a requirement and I said, Hey, that’ll help you pay for college, but you have to apply for at least five scholarships that.

So it was just a little deal that we just worked out with us and said, Hey, if you, if you want dad to cover, Hey, you’re not responsible for getting the scholarships. You’re just responsible for applying for them. And we’re very fortunate that they all did very well with finding, finding scholarships. But I think part of the problem is the persistence, the persistence, right?

You apply for one or two, you don’t get them and you go, huh? This doesn’t work out. The cost benefit analysis. I always tell students. You know, the winter break is a really good time to be applying for scholarships because you don’t have schoolwork to do right. So you can focus on, you know, putting some time, effort and energy into your, uh, scholarship applications.

Plus who’s not looking for an excuse to get out of the house during winter break. Like you love your mom and dad, but you know, it’s a far cry from being at home or being on campus. Right? Yeah. And there’s some really good, there’s some really good, you know, I mean, there’s lots of. The students who are on social media right now, there are some pretty good social influencers.

Like, uh, my college board talked, I did earlier this week, had someone featured, um, low Easton, so aloe and then Easton. Um, and so she is a scholarship coach and she has great tips. You can find on YouTube and watch some of her stuff. That might be another tip to kind of look at is finding who are those influencers or even people in your own network right there.

We all have that friend who just seems to be on top of things. Right. And so, so, so trying to figure out their process, you should always, you know, sort of trust the professionals, but I think you can get some good ideas from your friends and what are they going about and where are they getting scholarships and funding assistance.

Listening to that person was me. That friend was me. Please, please come talk to me about this because I was a big believer in college. I refuse to pay for something that some rich, wealthy and Dao endowment scholarship was going to pay for it. I’m not paying for that. So, um, there are a lot of things out there because a lot of times, I, I learned recently that like most times where these smaller scholarships, very, very few people apply.

It’s so few. And so basically the people who do apply get it, cause there was no competition. Right? The idea that the, the, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, this idea of. But, um, I mean, we do have a lot of great scholarships at this university because we have a lot of dedicated donors. People who really love the university of Texas, who’ve been very successful and they come back and they give to the university and they want to help our students out.

And so I think that would be something that would make the donors very sad. If students didn’t apply and take advantage of these two, um, to try to make their, their, their financial burdens, um, less challenging. So they could focus on. There are books in there and their studies and their education and, and, and making the world, uh, I totally forgot that a lot of these scholarships are coming from your real people who want to impact student livelihoods, real folks.

Right. You got about that for me, it’s just like, I don’t know. The university is just throwing money. Uh, no, no. We are real people and on purpose making relationships and reaching out and asking people in the university’s network to be able to, um, invest back into our students. And so even as the university sort of prepares for its next set of.

Um, development and fundraising efforts like scholarships continue to be one of those central points that the way it happens is, is on purpose. And I would just remind people that, yeah, we go out and we ask and we form those relationships. And that’s why, if you’ve gotten a raise scholarship here, you’ve probably been asked to write a thank you letter because there’s a real person on the other end who signed a check, who made it possible for you to have that.

And the donors really love getting those letters. They love it. They absolutely love it. It really charged them up and sometimes inspires them so much. They tell their friends who have money who want to give to scholarships. So, so, um, I would encourage students to not. Approach that process sort of begrudgingly, but to just sort of celebrate and embrace that you’re, you’re making the world a better place for the next group of people who are going to be trying to go through school and are looking for that scholarship, help tailor pro tip.

You don’t have to do it alone too. You know, you can go to the writing center and they’ll look at your applications, give you some advice, give you some tips. Tricks. Absolutely. Spellcheck does not always work. One of my, one of my, one of my favorite stories is when I was, um, reviewing. Searches one time. Um, the reason that the, the students that I, I really want to get this scholarship is because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life saying, do you want fires with them?

They met fries, but they said fires, which was very disturbing. Right. So very disturbing, right. This sort of, you know, sort of a hint at, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life working McDonald’s but

what’s going on their insurance investigator. So, Brian, um, how many students receive scholarships at UT every year? I can tell you that the university, um, awards over. $122 million in institutional aid in the form of scholarships and institutional grants. So it is a significant amount of money. So per year, per year, that’s a lot of money.

I’m just like, oh, what would I do with $129? Right? Yeah. Absolutely. So that’s it. So that’s a really, that’s a really significant amount of money and that’s why we want to make sure that students know. And they’re aware about that. And again, that’s not, it’s not the scholarships that are, the students are bringing in from, from all these talented sources, like their church or their parents, employers, or all those great places.

These are, these are specifically. Institutional dollars that we’ve either, either raised, are specifically dedicated from various purposes. So we talked about, you know, just apply and look for things that are a little bit more specific to you. But what other kind of advice would you offer for students who are looking for scholarships?

Yeah, I think spending some time and, and I’m thinking about themselves, right? Phil’s sort of hinted towards it. Like wouldn’t it be great. If there was a full scholarship, right? Like if it said fill scholarship. Great. And so there, there is one of the websites out there is calling on money bags on there.

And so, and so there is a website out there called niche.com and it is one of those scholarships search engines. And it, it kind of works towards that is trying to figure out your different niches. But the things that I like, um, if students are looking for scholarships is to just kind of brainstorm, spend some time thinking about all the different connections that you, that you have about yourself, right.

And just kind of go through and say, oh, do I have any sort of church affiliation? Do I have, you know, any hobbies of interest? What do I want to do? As far as career wise goes, what’s my family of origin. What are my backgrounds, my connections, those kinds of things. So that when these scholarship websites come, there’s usually a search and there are some filters that are there.

And so the more that you’ve thought about those things in advance, the more likely you’re able to up. Narrow, your focus down to some scholarships that are going to make the most sense, make the most impact for you. The second, the second thing I think is important is to sort of get organized, right? Like, so, so I have like a timeline.

Um, there’s usually different due dates and different dates when applications are opening up. So I like like a class assignment. Yeah. I like to just take out a spreadsheet, you know, just like an Excel or a Google doc spreadsheet and sort of pull it out and grab all those key dates that are there with the link.

And then I just put reminders on my phone back back, um, when I was in grad school, that would be the way that I would do it and just kind of remind me like, Hey, remember, you’re going to work on this time and then book the time out in your calendar to actually do it right. So the time aside to. Maybe Sundays between three and six are your sort of, that’s your jam time that you just go in there and you apply for scholarships once a once a week or once every other week or whatever that timeframe is.

Um, finances Friday. Yeah.

so that would totally work. And then, and then, you know, if you have a, if you have sort of a brag sheet on yourself, kind of those quick pieces, It can be really helpful to, um, to give to people who might have to fill out some references for you for some of the scholarships that come up. So, and then just kind of follow through, keep track of it because, um, again, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of the law of averages.

If you do enough of it, you have a quality process. You’re going to get some, you’re going to get some outcomes. You’re gonna get some returns and of course, reach out to folks like you, right. And again, get some help, get some assistance. Um, there, people are willing to look at it and help you out. That’s what we’re here for a lot of times when students are thinking about.

Scholarship and grant applications. They think that they have to, you know, have a quote unquote sob story. Uh, what do you think about that? Yeah, I, you know, I, I think that w a lot of people have had lots of difficult experiences that are going on, but I don’t think that’s everybody’s reality. That’s everybody’s story.

And I don’t think that that’s always necessary. I think what is. What what most, and I’ve sat in on lots of scholarship reviews. What most scholarship review panels are looking for is do you sort of meet the, um, the, the criteria and the priorities of the funds are trying to give out? So not looking for everyone to say, you know, Like everything has gone wrong.

My entire life. They’re looking for someone who has thought sort of deliberately and intentional about what’s going on. They’re there. They’re wanting to see how they’re going to use the money, how it’s going to make an impact, how it’s going to make a difference. Um, not all scholarships are need-based either.

There’s lots of them. Um, involve creativity, not every scholarship requires you to write a long essay. Um, that’s not always the case. There’s been some fun video ones. I’ve seen some sort of drawing design ones. Um, and there are some, some, uh, scholarship searches out there engines that you can go out there that you can filter out stuff like don’t require an essay don’t require some of that.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I think about, you know, even when you asked like your mom for $20 to do whatever you still had to present, like a pretty cogent case and like give examples. I think anytime you’re asking for any money, you can’t just like, expect it to be handed to you and you need to have some sort of justification, uh, large or small for how it’s going to be spent wisely or urgently.

Right. And how you’ve sort of deliberately sort of thought about how this will make an impact, how this will make. Make a difference and that you have some goals, right? These are some specific goals that you’re trying to accomplish. And, and these funds receiving these funds will enable those goals to be possible.

I think people give money for scholarships, want to be a part of your success story. So we’ve kind of talked about getting scholarships and, and being more aware of what’s out there. Um, you know, we talked to a lot of students. They feel like they’ve done everything right. They filled out their FAFSA they’ve sent in their forms and they’ve run into some kind of problem.

What are, what are kind of some of the most common things that you see that get in the way of people getting their, their financial aid? Uh, the couple of things, one, one there’s so much jargon. There’s so much financial aid jargon. Really hard to kind of go through those, but there’s even phrases like FAFSA and EFC and EFC is going to be getting changed the next couple of years to, um, to family index.

Or it feels like we barely learned EFC now. And they’re, they’re gonna, they’re going to switch that. We don’t do a good job with F financial education in this country. Right. Right. So I think the jargon is one of those things. Um, also, um, a lot of times when students fill out financial aid, uh, their application, they get selected for something called verification, which like an audit process, they ask for tax information and things like that.

And so that can be, um, so, so it typically happens probably about a third of the cases. Um, but it is, it is. It is a real situation for this, for the rest of this current year, that we’re in sort of the 2122, the federal government has, um, put in place a process where for the most part they’ve reduced that verification burden.

So that’s simplified and we’re advocating through our national association for them to the federal government. Continue that relief, but that hasn’t happened yet. But one of the things that we do have in place as the university recently entered into a contract with a company called pro-education and they have a new tool called pro verify.

And, um, uh, it has a lot of embedded smart forms in it, and it should make the process a lot easier so that students can’t fill out information with the wrong information. There’s better edits and so forth in place. It’ll streamline the process and flow of information. So. I’m pretty excited about this.

This will be the first fall that we’re doing that. And then we’re also replacing our financial aid system, the entire piece of it. And that’ll be, uh, we’ll start processing stuff next year with that. And the year after that we’ll be replacing the entire scholarship system. So there’s a lot of infrastructure things that the university is trying to do to try.

Streamline those processes bring in modern systems more intuitive than to apply for financial aid. It should absolutely be more intuitive. It should absolutely be a better experience for students and a more streamlined, um, more consistent, timely experience for them. So we are, um, primarily, um, running the university and their student systems on a, on a mainframe from the 1970s.

Yeah. We’re familiar with the mainframe. Filling out the FAFSA being asked for verification. I just remember being so scared. I was like, if I mess up a single number on this forum, I’m going to jail and I’m not getting any money. I was just so angry. I was going to like put you on the curve on Guam. Like you’re done.

I dunno, it it’s just something about filling out the FAFSA that makes it very, very worrisome, especially for families who are helping first gen students or families who are immigrants. Um, it’s a lot of scary words and a lot of scary form Sean asking. Can we be honest? It’s kind of awkward too with.

Asking her parents about like money stuff. Right. Cause you have to have their information to write, you know, like, so like mom and dad, like how much do we have in savings we made what last year? Right? Like there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of awkwardness to that. And then a lot of family situations are pretty.

Complicated too. And you’re like, I don’t know where this fits be able to ask that. Right. Right. So that, that part is really hard. And that’s why we encourage you to reach out to us and, you know, and to talk to us about those situations. So if there’s something difficult going on or something’s changed, right.

There’s a lot of, a lot of things have changed during this. Again, this pandemic that, you know, families. Came a strange or other kinds of situations like that, that are going on and happening. So we want, want to let us know if they’re either confused about a form or confused about how to fill something out.

They’re not sort of sure what to do. These kind of dead ends and roadblocks that sometimes people have as a part of the financial aid process and they just kind of throw their hands up in the air and like, I don’t know what to do. I quit. I surrender well. You know, they will throw you out of this university just as quickly for not paying the bill as they will for having bad grades.

So I was like, stick with the process, let us help you out. Let’s figure it out. I know it can be challenging, but there are really a lot of great dedicated professionals here to here to help. Yeah. That’s a really important point. I always felt like my financial aid was set in stone, you know, once I got that financial aid notification and that was it, you know, but it’s, it’s kind of reassuring to hear that, you know, your office and your team, are they.

If things do change for you in the middle of a school year, and maybe you do need more aid. And, um, the other group of helpers that are out there that I think is a little less known that people don’t always know about. Um, that’s just kinda got started during the pandemic was the Texas financial wellness, right?

So they, these are, these are financial literacy. Counselors, they are certified, they are trained, um, and they’re available to our students to be able to make appointments and to talk to them. And so, so, so maybe you don’t think you have enough money, but you know, they can help give you some tips and some guidance about how to budget or how to come up with other resources or, you know, through that conversation, they might also sort realize that there, there is some other resource that you are available to.

And so. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m dealing with something difficult, it’s, it’s helpful to kind of get it out of my brain and kind of unpack that with somebody else. And, um, they’re a great group of folks to, uh, to do that. Do they help staff to, uh, they absolutely would be happy.

Yeah. Finances are like this weird cultural thing that we just don’t really talk a whole lot about it. And it can be an awkward and hard conversation. I feel like my first year, students are always hungry for personal finance education, because it’s just not something that we learn about in high school here.

And I think we should actually, for, for my students, I’m doing a things Christina has learned since graduation day, basically adulting 1 0 1 and it’s going to be a lot of finance things too. This is what a credit card is. I had a, I had earlier this week, I did this, this, uh, this conversation with, with the college board.

And one of the things that I talked about was the talk, this idea that, that we really don’t have the talk with our parents, our families about sort of financing our education even before it gets started. And I know that we’re listening and we’re probably a lot of current students are listening, but there could be some staff and, and those who have.

Um, upcoming high school seniors who are going to be going through this process. And I would just say four quick things, one, you know, have the talk. Right. And just specifically just know PSA is for financial conversations, right? No. What are the, what are the educational goals of your, of your student, right?

Like what are you trying to accomplish? And parents, what are your expectations for, for, um, for your student when they go to school? So maybe the educational goal is they want to become a doctor or they want to be a lawyer. So you might think about. What your financial aid is going to look like how much you’re going to borrow, because you have a longer term sort of game plan in mind.

So just kind of thinking about some of that. And then again, talking through some of the family situations and what kinds of support they might get. When are there any strings on that support? Like, yes, we’ll continue to help you like with my kids, as long as you apply for scholarships, as long as you work a part-time job.

As long as you cover XYZ, like, are they willing to borrow a loan for you? Right. Like when they, cause there are parent loans out there, are they willing to do that? If you get into a difficult stretch, um, is there anything that sort of outside the norm you’re planning on doing like I’m planning on studying abroad or, or doing something where there might be a bigger purchase that we might want to be kind of planning over the next couple of years?

So it doesn’t just kind of fall upon us. So I think the talk is a really, really good thing to do because unfortunately in most cases, everything. It’s sort of urgent because we didn’t think about an advance and now it’s here and we don’t know what to do about it. Um, and it’s not too late to have that talk.

Even if you’re a junior or senior, I would say, right. It is, it is not too late to have that talk. It is certainly a great conversation to have. We just had this talk recently. With my oldest son, he graduated in 2017, but he’s planning to go to law school in the fall. And so we, here we go, here we go again.

We had this talk and what it’s going to look like and how’s that going to work? And where might you need some assistance? And are you going to be able to keep working or are you going to step down from working and how’s that going to how’s that going to operate even though he’s 26 now? Um, I’m interested to hear your take on this.

I talk with a lot of students who, um, are really, um, worried about parental support for college either. Um, you know, let’s say I am X major, but I really want to switch majors, but I don’t think mom and dad are going to be cool with that. And they’re going to stop paying for college. Um, what would you say to a student who’s in a situation like.

Yeah, that that can be a reality. The other thing can be your scholarship is tied to being in a particular major too. Right. And you’re like, okay, what if I, if I switch majors and I lose out on, on this, cause they’re not going to let me take this engineering scholarship over here to, you know, the college of liberal arts or something.

Right. So, um, I think that’s, I think that’s a great question. I would, I would start by thinking about why, why am I looking to change? Right. Um, is this an impulse? Am I having a bad semester? Did I get stuck in one of those classes? I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience, but I certainly took like a calculus exam.

One time. I was like, what was I thinking being this major? I should, I should just quit and switch and move and do those kinds of things. So, so is this something you’ve thought about, you know, what is sort of the reason behind that? So make sure you sort of have a well logic well-reasoned, um, conversation.

Yeah. And then everybody kind of knows their family too. Like what is the right setting to do that? Maybe, maybe, you know, we’re coming upon Thanksgiving, maybe not right before grace might not be the best time to start that, to start that conversation. Hey, real quick, before we cut that Turkey and we say prayer, I just want to let you know, I am no longer going to be, that may not be the best time to do that.

So it’ll be memorable. Right. So pick a time, right. Pick a place. Um, the other thing I would say. You know, a lot of times when, when we’re in college and I tried to have this routine with my, with my kids was, you know, don’t wait so long between those conversations, right? So like, so like when you do call it’s something so urgent, like make it more normal that we’re checking in and they don’t, you know, you know, as parents, we don’t need to know every part about your sort of college life, but you know, those key important things.

He knows regular check-in so that hopefully there’s been some clues that, Hey, you remember how I told you I was struggling with this? Remember I told you, I was thinking about some of these things. Remember I told you I was going to go meet with the academic advisor and try and figure out what some of my different options are.

Um, that’s really good. And then the other thing is, you know, have you thought about applying. Right. Like, what would that look like? If your, if your family said, Hey, I couldn’t help you. I’m not going to be able to support you anymore. Like what other kinds of options would that be for you? Would you, would you have to go part-time for a semester?

Would you, would you, would you, um, would you be open and willing to, um, work more hours or pick up other kinds of things? So just kind of, you know, kind of taking some time and going through it, just like any problem that we have is like, this could go this way. This could go this way. Um, because you know, none of us can sort of guarantee how that, that conversation is going to go.

Um, but I would also just kind of say, and I just, I don’t know, it just kind of just hit my spirit it’s moment. A lot of people are dealing with mental, mental health things right now. So if you have a difficult conversation like that with your family, um, you know, please don’t forget about all the great resources that the university has.

Or if you’re wrestling with having that conversation might be helpful to, um, role-play that with somebody first giving us ideas for future podcasts episodes.

Um, well, um, is there anything else that’s going on in the financial aid world or, you know, uh, in, in your office you feel like you want to share, or you know, that people need to be on the lookout. Um, well, I think the big things that are, that are going on that we want people to, to, to be aware of is obviously the same process that we did for these, these Herff emergency funds, um, will happen in the spring as well, and on a very sort of similar cadence.

So we’re going to want to make sure that, um, you know, they’re keeping their eye out and being prepared, um, for those processes as they’re, as they’re coming up and, uh, Yeah, I think that’s probably the biggest thing that’s right, right in front of us that we just really want people to know about and to be aware of and just take advantage of these great resource.

Right? Like we talked about Texas one-stop. I talked about how to go about sort of finding scholarships and just remembering that we’re here to help you get through this process. And, uh, I think someone told me recently, we were sort of three years removed from the last normal school year. Right. And just, I was just kind of like this kind of hit.

A funny place and just realize that we’re sort of all working through the, the, um, the trauma together, the trauma together and the challenge together, for sure. And yeah, just, just don’t ever feel like you’re in this by yourself, that there are, uh, professionals here to help you and assist you. And I, I know.

Well, intimidating and overwhelming kind of like going to the pharmacist and they’re sitting high and they’re looking down and they’re asking you, is there any questions that you have and you feel like you should know all the answers and you, you don’t. My dad used to say, if it doesn’t make sense and don’t buy it.

Right. So, so just keep asking those questions, keep being a good advocate. And if for some reason that’s too hard to do, then find a friend or a classmate or somebody who can come with you. And, um, And give you the strength to kind of do what you need to do. If you’re out there having a difficult time, let somebody know so we can help you.

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate your candor and being open about these topics. I know the money is, is a touchy subject for a lot of folks, but an important one though, too. Yes. Like Brian was saying a lot of money goes out each year to a lot of students at UT. What was that number? Like 20, 122 million, just for the institutional portion, the university as a whole we’re through the financial aid and scholarship office.

You know, well, over $500 million is going out through, through the, uh, university that we’re helping manage half a billion dollars with a B yeah. Wow. A lot of money. Yeah. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to come chat with us on the podcast today. Absolutely a pleasure, glad to glad to be here.

Hopefully I’ll earn my way back onto the program someday, but until then you guys keep spreading all that good information, uh, students and helping them be successful. We love it and we’ll keep listening. Well, thanks. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Brian. Absolutely. Take care.

That was a really great conversation with Brian Dixon. I love talking to people who know their stuff, right. I also love talking about money because who doesn’t love money and not even that, just like, I think that money is something that should be a much more transparent conversation. And it’s important that we’re able to have that conversation openly with students early on in their young adult life.

Yeah. Um, finances are kind of like mental health, right? It’s it’s, it’s not always obvious who’s struggling with it or who is succeeding with it just by looking around. And I think that it’s easy to get caught in this idea that like, oh, everybody else at UT has their financial situation figured out except for me.

Right? Yeah. Who’s walking down west mall being like, man, this scholarship I got is the best people are usually like, I’m not telling anybody about the scholarship cause I want to keep getting here. I mean, that was how I was like, I was like, I’m not telling anybody about my scholarships. I want it for myself next year.

So I especially liked the many, many resources that Brian was plugging. I think something that I looked at briefly, but didn’t really know too much about until today was the Texas financial wellness. Career, not career coaches, sorry, financial coach coaches. Um, I think that is a really awesome resource. A lot of times it feels like for young people in America, you have to seek that knowledge out on your own, learn it on your own.

Um, I think I tried to teach myself finances through like YouTube videos and then I realized that my attention. Too low and sorry. Roth. IRA learned about finances on tech talk. I learned a lot on tech talk. I watch a lot of videos about like budgeting and investing and saving and emergency savings and everything through Tik TOK.

But of course, um, those people are not professionals there’s. He did talk about, you know, those, uh, scholarship influencers on social media. But I do, but you know, we also have the Texas financial wellness center, so you can watch tick talks or you can go to the Texas financial wellness center, either one are good options for y’all.

Um, I also really appreciated that he talked about calculus class being tough, and now he’s in charge of financial aid for the entire university. So, you know, if you’re out there struggling in calculus, there’s hope, don’t worry. You know, you two could still, uh, become, yeah, you could be in charge of $500 million someday.

Really scary. I mean, Really admired how much UT supports its students financially compared to other universities. I know that there’s still a lot of work done in American higher education, but I think that compared to other universities, especially other universities of our caliber, UT definitely does a really good job.

I just did not know how much money was. Yeah. I think, uh, being a public institution of our caliber kind of gives us access to buckets of money that other schools, um, you know, that haven’t done. Um, about our size don’t have access to, you know, when you think about the Ivy league schools. Yes. They are immensely well-funded however, they don’t have the same access to state funding or to, uh, federal funding that a school like UT does.

Yeah. And so we are very lucky to be here. I am very lucky to have graduated from, from UT. And I think that you should all remember that as a university, sometimes it feels. Everything is working against you, but there is a resource for whatever it is that you’re experiencing. There is somebody in some office on campus whose entire job is to help you work through that.

You get it figured out. Um, something else that Brian talked about was, um, you know, this idea that you don’t have to have a sob story. Uh, scholarship, right. Um, you don’t have to be all over, um, you know, with your pockets turned out. Okay. Yeah. I think that a lot of times we feel like scholarship money is only for people who have sob stories, but I’m sure that people who review scholarships are really tired of reading sob stories that are just sob stories.

Um, maybe, maybe throw a little bit of personality in there. I liked that he really emphasized that. Um, as a scholarship application reviewer, he really prioritize students who were intentional with what they wanted to do with the money students who wrote about how much of an impact it would have on accomplishing their goals.

I think that that reframing is really, really important that it’s not just here are the things that I’ve been through, but also here is what I plan to do. To make myself my community and the world a better place. And here’s how your money would help me do that. I think that really outlines a much more convincing story.

I think he also added a to-do item to everyone who listens to this list, uh, have the talk, right? Like you think about like the sex talk with mom and dad or the. With mom and dad, where’s your alcohol talk? Who talks about where’s that he talk? You don’t need the money talk. I didn’t have that conversation.

I forced my parents to have that conversation. Like I said, I’ve always been like, I’ve always been like this. Show me the dollars and cents mom. No, literally I was like, I need to know what I’m getting myself to going to college. I need to know everything so that I can make the best decisions that I can for my education.

And so that I can. You know, know what it is that I’m bringing back home when I graduate well, good for you. This is probably why you have fewer loans than I do. And I’m still paying. I graduated with no loans, fill up Butler. I graduated with no loans because I forced my parents to have to talk. There you go.

There you go. There’s the secret secret. There’s a secret. Um, I also really appreciated that. Brian told us how to look for scholars. Um, Texas one-stop has a scholarship finder. And I was actually looking through that, managing your costs, I think, is what he said, managing your costs. And then it goes to scholarship finder and you’ll be able to really narrow things down according to what you would qualify for, what you would be a good candidate for.

Um, this is a very easy way to look for scholarships because I feel like when I was in school, I had to use like 15 different UT websites at once or Google. Yeah, it’s not that helpful, but I want to emphasize that colleges and majors also do offer scholarships that are, you know, much less popular. Yeah.

And quick plug for the Cola, uh, scholarship page. There are lots of scholarships available specifically for liberal arts students on our website. And I always point out that there’s a significant amount of scholarships available for studying abroad to, to help. Oh, yeah. Basically, if you’re not planning to study abroad in Europe, you can get a ton of money.

If you’re planning to study abroad on Europe, you can still get money. It’s just not as much as if you went elsewhere. I’ve even heard stories of people going abroad and it being cheaper than UT because the cost of living was better. They went on exchange. So they are paying you T tuition that they had scholarship money for.

I studied abroad in London for. Free basically, um, there’s a ton of money out there. No, not yet. Another great idea for podcast. I think how to study abroad for free. Like I said, I refuse to pay for things that somebody else will pay for instead of me on a bad emo, not at all. Well, I think that’s about all the time we have for today.

Absolutely. I want to remind you all the FAFSA application is due January 15th. Yeah. That was the early preference was FAFSA. And then most scholarship deadlines you said was March 15th, right? Yes. So get, get on it. If you haven’t started better to do it now than later, cross it off the to-do list.

Absolutely. And then. All right. Well, uh, thanks for tuning in yet again, to listen to the sounds success. Um, we hope that until next time, all of your endeavors are a success.