Spinning Gold - JRA Consulting
With three decades of educational guidance, JRA Educational Consulting has thousands of success stories. Each month we choose one story to share with the hope that it will inspire others.
How do you turn a $6000 investment into a $150K payday?
A. Harry Potter Wand
B. Early investor in Apple
C. Win the long shot 25/1 horse race
D. Buy some magic beans and get the golden egg
E. Invest in your child
You’ve probably already guessed correctly: it’s E. This isn’t a fairytale. In fact, we helped one of our college-bound student and his family spin his education into gold.
Case in point: a Palm Beach County resident whom we guided through the college application process this past year. JRA Educational Consulting leveraged our decades of experience to put him in the best possible position to exceed his college and scholarship goals. He received combined scholarship offers totaling $530,000 from the schools that accepted him. Half a million dollars! This student accepted an almost 90% scholarship to Ohio Wesleyan University. The value of the four-year scholarship is the $150,000 we mentioned above. The family spent $5,600 with us on the college planning and application process. We think that’s more than a fair return on investment.
JRA Educational Consulting can’t claim every student will achieve this degree of success. But we can claim that we do our best to ensure each student's success in all of our programs. Simple planning and achievement could earn your student a Bright Futures Scholarship (available to FL residents) which provides students attending Florida schools thousands of dollars every year.
A couple of years ago, we worked with a family whose daughter set a goal: achieve test scores that would qualify her for Florida’s Bright Futures scholarship. Her first attempt at the test garnered a 22, but she needed at least 26 to qualify for the scholarship. What did the family do? They enrolled their daughter in our ACT workshop, supplemented by one-on-one tutoring to address specific areas in which the student had some difficulty. In two months of preparation, our student jumped FIVE points to a 27! The results speak for themselves: an investment of just over $1,000 has netted the family over $9,200 in undergraduate savings. That’s well beyond a 700% Return on Investment!
Here are more details about Bright Futures:
Award Amounts (note that the FAS award amount may be significantly increased this coming year if the governor signs the pending Bright Futures legislation):
Eligibility Requirements: Colleges and universities use test scores, among other criteria, to determine the need-based aid that they will offer to accepted students. Higher scores can lead to larger financial aid packages that combine grants, scholarships, loans, and work-study opportunities to pay for college.
This is just the first example of potential payoffs from investing in your child’s education. When it comes to college and scholarship applications, we seek to maximize every opportunity for our students and their parents. That’s probably a better hedge than a track bet, magic wand, or golden goose chase.
