990. This week, Laura interviews Jocelyn Pearson from The Scholarship System about how to reduce the cost of college and graduate debt-free.
This week, Laura interviews Jocelyn Pearson from The Scholarship System about how to reduce the cost of college and graduate debt-free.
Find a transcript here.
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We all know that the cost of higher education has skyrocketed, and for many families, the 'sticker price' of a degree feels like an impossible hurdle. But what if I told you that there’s a way to significantly lower, or even eliminate, the cost of college without having to take out a massive amount of student loan debt? Today, my special guest has the answer!
First, I want to welcome you back to the Money Girl Podcast! I'm Laura Adams, an award-winning author, on-camera spokesperson, female money speaker, founder of The Money Stack, a Substack newsletter, and host of Money Girl with over 44 million downloads. You can always connect with me, send your money question, and learn more at LauraDAdams.com.
I’m excited to bring you my interview with Jocelyn Pearson, founder of The Scholarship System. She has turned the scholarship search into a science. After winning more than $126,000 in scholarships and graduating debt-free, she’s made it her mission to teach students and parents how to do the same.
Whether you’re a student heading to college, considering a graduate degree, or a parent planning for the future, this conversation can save you thousands! Jocelyn and I discuss:
Here’s my interview with Jocelyn Pearson.
[Computer-generated transcript]
Laura Adams:
Jocelyn, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here!
Laura Adams:
We talked a long time ago, I can't even remember what year it was, but I thought it would be great to revisit the topic of scholarships since you are the expert in this category. And I would imagine that there are a lot of families, maybe with the new year starting to think about school, maybe they're filling out some financial aid forms. You can tell me more about where parents and kids are in this process.
But I would love for you to share your experience with scholarships with the audience, and just tell us a little bit about how that's impacted your career.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah, I would love to mean, for me, scholarships were quite literally life changing. So, it all started off with my own experience where my parents said, we love you guys, but there's no way we can afford college. And so actually a friend's mom said, you need to be doing scholarship applications. And so, I started it and it's a whole story. I got sucked into scams, all the things, but I eventually figured it out and I got enough by the end of high school to my freshman year in college. And then a lot of that did carry over, but I still had a little gap.
So, I applied for more for sophomore and junior and senior. And in the end, after, by the end of my college degree, I got over six figures in scholarships. So, it was this slow accumulation to a free ride because I wasn't one of those students that got, you know, we see these articles about students that got $60 million in offers and all these crazy numbers. And that just wasn't me–I like to joke that I was a mere mortal, applying for scholarships or an average student, right? And so that was my own experience of getting scholarships myself.
After college, we had families saying, “How did you do this–because we need help!” And so, I decided to put it in a book, and that became The Scholarship System because I realized as I was telling them what to do, I sounded like a broken record. I was just repeating the same thing over and over and over. And that's when it dawned on me.
This is a system. This is something that families can follow the steps. So again, it became a book and then was still in the corporate world. That was supposed to be all it was. But a year after launching that book, after releasing it, I saw all these families just purchasing it and they wanted more. They wanted more handholding and they wanted more support. And so we started the full course and now it's been over a decade, which is incredible.
So, we've helped families now get over $16 million, which is hard to even imagine. I remember once I was like, one day I'm going to help people get a million dollars. And now we've just blown that out of the water. So that's really the path to The Scholarship System. But as far as where we are right now, releasing this episode, it's the new year.
And a lot of families are really starting to hit it hard with scholarships because we've gotten the admissions out of the way for our senior families. Hopefully we have some acceptances rolling in. And so now they're saying, my gosh, we need to figure out how to pay the bill. And so, our senior families are scrambling. And the good news is there are tons of deadlines all the way until fall, right? Through The Scholarship System, we give out money. For the last 10 years, I've given out scholarships. Our deadline isn't until July and we mail out checks two weeks later. So the good news is that we've got time. That said, we definitely need to get moving for our senior families.
Laura Adams:
Yeah, that's fantastic. Let me just back up a little bit and ask you what exactly is a scholarship? We hear grants, scholarship, work-study, all of these different types of ways that students can get some income. You know, how do you define a scholarship?
Jocelyn Pearson:
And I love that. love you mentioning multiple different terms because there are many. So, we actually have something called a debt free degree dictionary for our members because there are so many acronyms, so many different terms. When I think of scholarships, I think of money, debt free money that doesn't have to be paid back. So scholarships, grants, and cash awards actually is another term that you'll hear are very similar. We can get them for many different things, many different criteria from many different sources and they don't have to be paid back.
With grants, like the Pell grant, this is a government-based source of funding also does not have to be paid back but the way to tap into that kind of grant is through FAFSA. When we talk about federal funding we are tapping into that usually by submitting FAFSA where scholarships that can be from, my gosh, from the schools themselves, from outside sources, we can get into all of that. So that's really a big difference between the two.
And then when we talk about cash awards, that is just like a scholarship, except it's an award, so it's given immediately. So, a lot of times scholarships, they are for the following school year. So, if we're applying for scholarships right now, they're for this upcoming fall semester.
I actually received a cash award my final semester, my senior year. And so, I was given a check right then and there and the money was for whatever I needed right then and there rather than it being for the next school year. So, I actually cashed my final cash award on the way home from college graduation. So, our families like cash awards the best, of course, but they are less common. But ultimately scholarships, grants, cash awards, they don't have to be paid back. And just because you mentioned it, you mentioned work study.
This also does not have to be paid back; however, we have to work for it. So, it is also through FAFSA, and we have to have a university role and then we get kind of like an hourly rate for our effort, so for our work.
Laura Adams:
Okay, great. Yeah, thanks for defining all of those. Is there some kind of maybe myth that you have to be a straight-A student, or you've got to be a great athlete or, you know, be some winner in some particular subject to be able to get a scholarship?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah, so with my story, when I say I was a mere mortal or an average student, my SAT scores were below average. I forget athletic skills. That's another story for another day. But let's just say that my family quickly ruled out athletic scholarships for me. So I had to find scholarships that were eligible for me, that were a possibility for me.
So, there are other scholarships for those top star students, of course, but are there scholarships for ones that may not have that perfect GPA? Absolutely. And so this is a huge myth. I think a lot of parents even rule out their student. say, well, you know, they're not top of their class, or they're not involved in a ton of things. And that's okay. What we need to do is find maybe the one or two passions that they are involved in or that they care a lot about or that they can write a lot about, and then we can find scholarships.
I'll never forget through universities, you would think, especially university scholarships, they've got to require a high GPA, right? We filtered for ones that were under a 3.5 and we found 200 university scholarships that were just automatically given as long as they had somewhere in that, I think it was 3.2 to 3.5 GPA. So, imagine if I said, my kid only has a 3.4, so we're not even going to look for colleges that offer money, we would miss out on potentially 200 options.
So, that said, that is a huge myth that we deal with, but there are scholarships out there for nearly any student. It's just a matter of finding what we do have going for us and finding the money that aligns with that.
Laura Adams:
Yeah, what are some examples of those? Could it be an affiliation with an organization or a church or even a disability or you know, an ethnicity? I mean, can you get that granular?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Definitely. So, we're going to share a link at the end where they can get more of a visual training where I go through searches and a lot of sources. So of course, first and foremost, a lot of people think of scholarships as money from universities. And I already kind of busted the idea that we have to be a perfect student to do that. If we're willing to open up our mind for which school we want to attend, we can follow the money and possibly knock off tens of thousands of dollars right there.
So again, 3.2s, 3.0s, 3.4s, know, not necessarily a perfect GPA. So, they can get money there. But then when we move over to the private side, that outside scholarship source, so there's money through universities, but then there's money from banks, credit unions, lawyers' offices, doctors' offices, PTAs, PTSAs, Elks Club, Rotary Club, all of these different sources. And they all have different criteria.
At The Scholarship System, like I mentioned, we've given out our own scholarship. We ask for GPA. However, we literally hide that column when we are deciding our winners. We only ask for it in case we ever need it as a tiebreaker. And in a decade of giving out scholarships, we've never used it. So many scholarships don't even look at GPA or test scores. But like you said, it could be criteria based on characteristics, passions, ethnicity, even areas you live in.
If you live in this County, just write an essay about this and we'll choose the best winner. So, the options are endless. And this is where I think actually it can be a little overwhelming. often say a lot of families don't get scholarships because of overwhelm. They just go and Google scholarships for seniors or something, or they'll go to fastweb.com and there's so much out there that don't pertain to them. And I think that's where we help, right? We give them a little tunnel vision where we just look at scholarships that pertain to you and narrow it down. But the good news is there are so many different categories.
Laura Adams:
I love that. I mean, that really should open up people's eyes to what the possibilities are. And I would say maybe what's a good timeline for families if maybe a family has kids in high school? Is it too early as a sophomore or junior? What's kind of the sweet spot to start looking for scholarships?
Jocelyn Pearson:
If I could, I would say junior year no later. I always tell this story. I've got junior families parents that say, well, it's junior year and it's crazy already. We need test scores and we need to get involved in all this stuff. And so, we'll focus on scholarships next year. And then I talked to my senior families and they're like, we don't have time for scholarships, and I know we need to be doing this, you know, and I'm, and I laugh. I'm like, where was the school year in between that everyone thought was the right time to do scholarships? So, all my senior families say to juniors start now if you can, because senior year does not get calmer. It really doesn't. And actually, if we wait until spring semester senior year, we missed out on tons of optional, of tons of deadlines. There are scholarship deadlines that juniors can apply to and secure money.
And then that fall semester, if we've been doing it already junior year, especially The Scholarship System, in theory, we have this big, accumulated list of scholarships ready to go. There are fall deadlines that many students don't apply to. So naturally, by getting ahead of it, we're knocking out applications that are just less competitive because other families are not even thinking of scholarships yet. Now, again, if we wait until the spring semester, fine, there are tons of deadlines. That's great. There's time.
But the early bird definitely has more opportunities to get the worm here. So again, I would say spring semester junior year, no later than that, that summer, if we're doing this, it will make the admissions process a million times easier as well. So, it actually will alleviate some of the senior year stress.
For our sophomores in high school, there won't be many scholarships to apply to, but there is an opportunity there where families can learn how to get competitive. They can start picking out passion projects, what can basically set our student up for success that year to make sure they have a lot to talk about in their essays. So that's what they can be doing then. But applying for scholarships really can begin junior year.
Laura Adams:
Terrific, and then you mentioned sort of continuing that scholarship process even once you're in college. I mean, that never even occurred to me when I was a student. I mean, how does that work? Do you have to be actively submitting or can you use an essay that you wrote before and recycle it a little bit, or is it a combination?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Absolutely. So, we have an entire lesson literally on reusing essays the right way, because this is where you can really, your student can really benefit from a winning essay. In college, once I started winning scholarships, I would say I wrote maybe five essays, and I would just reuse them over and over. But to go back for a moment, the answer is absolutely. Can you keep applying throughout college?
We have families in The Scholarship System where they find us, their student already graduated from high school and they got this bill. They figured out the first semester, and they just realized this is not sustainable. And one family in particular, found us, it was June, she had just graduated from high school and they started applying. They were like, okay, Jocelyn says this isn't too late. By the end of freshman year in college, she got $15,000 in private scholarships, and then the following year, another 20,000.
So, imagine if she just said the ship sailed. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars. So, can they apply? Absolutely. And in some ways, they almost have a better chance of winning because they're already there. They're already proving, hey, I'm doing this. And look at my GPA. Look at my involvements. Scholarship committees love investing in someone that's going to use the money wisely and succeed with it.
If this student's rocking it at college and they can show that, then they're going to be more competitive for it. So as far as, like, where we can find money through the universities, you can find them through all these private sources and then any clubs that they're joining. Oftentimes, the local organization will have them, the national organizations will have them. So there's lots of opportunity.
Laura Adams:
What kind of time commitment should people think about if they work with you through The Scholarship System, you know, what should they really think about as a minimum time to put in to really see some results?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah, we tell our families two hours a week. And so, we have something we call a “Scholarship Sunday” where, it could be any day of the week, but this is where we reserve an hour to two hours. We sit down, maybe mom and dad were doing bills or budgeting, whatever we need to do, or we could be doing the finding. And then our child is over there doing the essays. And if we can do that weekly and just kind of make it this set time, it'll alleviate the stress of the other six days of saying, Did you knock out a scholarship? Did you do it? Are you applying? You know, that nagging that we have to do to stay on top of our children? That can kind of go by the wayside. They know, geez, when Sunday comes along, mom's going to be asking me, did I get this done? Or, you know, I'm going to have to show something. So it kind of concentrates the effort. But two hours, if we're doing that weekly, that's a great effort.
Now I will be honest with you and say, this is one tip that I give our families that I did not follow myself. I was a batcher—I’d rather do all of my searching, find all of the deadlines, and then I would spend a weekend or a holiday break, and I would knock out like eight of them, right? So personally, I was a batching kind of student, but I will say that our families that have had the massive six-figure wins, most of them say they used our scholarship Sunday strategy.
Laura Adams:
Okay, that's great to hear because that's not a huge time commitment. That's really a lot lower than I thought you were going to tell me. So yeah, just a couple hours a week. And if you get all of these great scholarships that end up helping you avoid student loans, they help you get into schools that you really want to get into, and that's going to pay off so much in the long run.
And I think that's so important just to mention the whole reason we want to get scholarships is, so we don't have to take out student loans and we don't have to have so much pressure on mom and dad. If mom and dad are willing to pay for college fantastic but my goodness if you can get scholarships, taking a little bit of burden off of them may help them be able to retire earlier, just take a little bit of that financial pressure off. So, mom and dad need to be invested in this process as well, I would say. I like those Sunday deadlines. That's a great way to kind of do it as a family.
Do you think that there are more scholarships for let's say undergraduates versus graduates? Is there like any difference in terms of like, the level of education that you're seeing?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah, so we focus specifically on undergraduate students. That's just my wheelhouse. But we have brought in experts on the graduate side or not necessarily experts in the way that we train people, but that they've gotten a lot of money for graduate. There's a different word. It's called fellowships. So a lot of times at graduate degree, you can find kind of teaching assistants’ roles that will give you funding or fellowships is an option.
But for sure, there's more money widely available for undergraduate that's just more common. Maybe because organizations just don't think of it, but certainly undergraduates when, especially if mom and dad are getting involved, this is when we can get really involved and see a difference. But that said, one of our members, I'll never forget, she got a free ride in undergrad. And at this point, she's out of grad school. We've been doing this for so long. So, this is an old story, but she actually got through undergraduate debt free because of The Scholarship System, emailed us and said, okay, now how do I get my master's degree paid for? And using the skills she did, she did not have to borrow anything for either of her degrees. So, there is money available, not as widely known or out there as undergraduate, but it is possible.
Laura Adams:
Jocelyn, what tips do you have for a student maybe that gets some scholarships but can't go completely debt-free? What should they be thinking about?
Jocelyn Pearson:
We have The Scholarship System and then we have something called Debt-Free Degree Lab where we've got tons of mini lessons on all these different strategies that we can use. So, when I talk about paying for college, there's, in my opinion, two sides of the equation. You've got the total bill. How do we get that bill down to as little as possible? And then the other side is how do we find as much debt-free money or, yeah, debt-free money to pay for it?
And so if we can bring that gap down to as little as possible and then find debt-free money to cover it, that's how we can work out a debt-free degree. For some of our families, there are so many different creative avenues that we can go. And this is where we talk about, we call our families hashtag rebel families because we like to be a little rebellious. We say, you know, we are saying no to the broken system. We don't want that white picket fence that comes with on average 21 years of student loans.
But that means that we need to think about this process very differently from what they say you just do sign the dotted line. And that means thinking outside the box. If I was a student that had a gap, first off, if we are at the option of applying and looking at admissions, this is where I would consider schools that may not have been on my radar but are good financial fits. How can we find a one great site is College Navigator.
If we Google college navigator, it's a weird link actually, but we can put in kind of our criteria, and it can come up with schools that might be a better fit. College Board also has a search engine like this, but finding a school that is a better financial fit can knock off tens of thousands of dollars. Okay. Then we're working on private money, private scholarships, outside sources, always, right? Starting junior year in high school, and then we continue applying all the way through college.
This is a continuous thing where we can continue bringing in money. I love part-time jobs. It's proven that if they're under 20 hours a week, it actually improves GPA. So having that part-time job does usually help them be better at time management. They're more disciplined. They're not getting into trouble. So, I do love working, working over breaks, working over summer breaks to put cash aside.
Whatever we can do to avoid those student loans, especially with interest rates, we want to do. Some parents might be thinking, let me cash out my 401k or go into my retirement funds. I think you and I would both agree, absolutely not. You can always borrow for college. You cannot borrow for your retirement. So, this is something that we frequently tell parents, please, please don't do that.
And I understand that we want to give our children every opportunity possible. And I get it. I've met parents where they say, well, I didn't get to go to college, and I don't want to do that to my child. want to, and they're willing to sacrifice everything for it, remortgage their homes. We've got to take care of ourselves. Okay. Down the road, if you're not in a financial situation, your child must take care of you because you did that. That's going to be a bigger challenge. Right?
So that said, we want to be gritty. We want to be savvy. And it could even be maybe we can purchase a home near the college so our student can live rent free and their roommates pay the mortgage. There are so many strategies. Let's be clever, but let's also be intentional with our financial future.
Laura Adams:
Yeah, that's great. Some of the stats that I looked at recently show $1.8 trillion in student loan debt in 2025. The average borrower has about 40,000. And delinquency rates are going up. Unfortunately, this is something we've been hearing about with 20% of those with student loan debts have missed a payment in 2025. So that's, you know, really a bad sign.
We want to avoid student debts as much as we can. Maybe if a family is interested in paying for a portion of a child's education, you know, I've recommended maybe thinking about three buckets. Maybe you pay for a third, maybe as you said, the child works for a third, and maybe the third we work, we look for scholarships. Maybe, you know, we try to break it up into kind of manageable portions.
But as you've mentioned, it's not out of the realm of possibility to go on a free ride if you are really clever about it and have multiple strategies kind of in place to get the costs down, to also get as much debt-free money as possible. I think there's just more possibility there than a lot of parents realize. So, if somebody's interested in working with you, how does that begin? Do you take students and families in at particular times of the year, or can they work with you any time of year? How does that work?
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah, great question. People can join The Scholarship System throughout the entire year. So, we let people in whenever they are ready to jump in because there are scholarship deadlines throughout the entire year. That said, of course, the early in the new year is often a very busy time for us because that's when families really feel, no, we've got to figure out now how to get money before that May 1st decision date.
Early in the New Year is a busier time, but they can be applying throughout all of the year. So anytime, but that said, if they want to join us, I really recommend attending our free webinar just to get a taste of it and see some of these myths. We've got four full myths. One of them we talked about today,does my student need to be a superstar student or athlete? The answer is no. Also, some specific searches I give and that way you can kind of test it out and see if you can find money for a child.
I would check out that free training and that gives you a taste. And some people can take that and run with it. And then they'll find, we're applying but we're not winning. And then they kind of come back and they're like, okay, what are we doing wrong here? And that's where the rest of the system comes into place, right? How do we write a well-written essay that really sells us? How do we use materials to save time? How do we do interviews?
There are so many kinds of materials that they can submit. So, we can share links, you know, at the end, but if they just go to TheScholarshipSystem.com/MoneyGirl, we'll make sure they get to the right place for those free trainings for sure.
Laura Adams:
I love it. Jocelyn, if you could leave us with maybe just your top tip to help students and families avoid debt, what would it be?
Jocelyn Pearson:
There is so much! First and foremost, don't rule yourselves out. Don't think. Another common myth is we make too much money. And that's just these days, most scholarship committees know, even if FAFSA says you make enough, it is just not the truth. These bills are just, they have increased, and yet wages have not. So, the FAFSA does not determine whether we can get scholarship money. We have seen families where FAFSA said, you're not going to get anything. And then they get tens of thousands of dollars in funding.
So please don't rule yourselves out. If someone tells you, you make too much that don't waste your time. That's not true. And don't rule your student out just because they're not involved in everything under the sun. That is OK. We just need to find what they do have going for them. So that's the biggest thing is just finding out are scholarships even possible for us and believing it because the answer nine times out of 10 is absolutely.
And then the second one we didn't get onto this, but I know that it'll be so helpful is the skill of storytelling, mastering that for essays. When we are writing and filling out scholarship applications, we are not writing it like a research paper, right? We want it to be memorable and creative. We want it to stand out. And even if your child is not a writer, I believe it or not, I hated writing, I was terrible at it.
We've got a three-step writing method that kind of helps get around that, but the biggest thing, if you are a parent and you're reviewing your student scholarships, ask yourself, is this memorable or are they writing it like a research paper? And that alone, going back to the drawing board, if it is like a research paper, will drastically increase their chances of getting some money.
Laura Adams:
I love that. That's great. Jocelyn, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing all your tips and just for everything you're doing for students and families to help make college an achievable goal, even as prices are going up. And as you said, the economics of it is not getting any easier for families. So, we do need to be creative.
I appreciate your persistence, as that's how you were able to secure so many scholarships. People know that it's possible when they see you and see your system. So, it's really great to chat with you again. I know this will be so helpful for families.
Jocelyn Pearson:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I love sharing this, and even if it's a $500 scholarship, that's something they don't have to pay out of their pockets. Those little dollar amounts can add up!
Laura Adams:
A big thanks to Jocelyn Pearson for helping us make college more affordable. Again, you can visit TheScholarshipSystem.com/MoneyGirl to watch a free masterclass for parents called 6 Steps to Help Your Student Secure Scholarships for College.
That's all for now. I'll talk to you soon. Until then, here's to living a richer life!
Money Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast, and I want to thank our fantastic team! Steve Riekeberg audio-engineers the show. Holly Hutchings is our director of podcasts, Morgan Christianson is our advertising operations specialist, Rebekah Sebastian is our marketing and publicity manager, and Nathaniel Hoopes is our marketing contractor.