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CNMI Scholarship Office: 1,111 students apply for financial aid
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Posted on Sep 27 2011
By Moneth Deposa
Reporter
Reporter
Over a thousand students applied for financial aid with the CNMI Scholarship Office this fall semester-a 35-percent increase in the number of applications the office received in the last five years, according to administrator Jackie Che.
Of the 1,111 applications for the current semester, Che said that 1,053 were able to meet the deadline.
As of last week, 405 applications for the Educational Assistance Program have been approved; 69 were denied; 108 are under review; and the rest remain pending for the receipt of documents. The deadline for these supporting documents is Sept. 30.
Che said that students will be notified about their pending documents this week via letter and email.
Of the thousand-plus applications, about 800 applications may be eligible for the financial awards, Che said.
“Because we have reached our 10-day mark until the deadline, our final numbers of approved and denied recipients will increase. I am projecting 800 approved recipients this year,” she told Saipan Tribune.
As for the honors award recipients, she said 10 are new, 32 are ongoing, and 13 are terminated recipients due to non-compliance. To date, 20 have been approved for honors scholarship and 12 are under review.
Of the 1,111 total applications this fall semester, 669 are on-island applicants, 386 are off-island applicants, and the remaining 57 turned in their applications past the deadline, Che said.
“Because of the increase in our applicant pool and our $2 million budget, there will definitely be a reduction in the awards this school year. The board has yet to approve the award allocation per student this fall. Award letters will be sent out beginning October,” said Che.
The NMI Scholarship Office functions under the Office of the Governor and is appropriated an annual budget of $2 million. Of the figure, almost half of it goes to the Honors Scholarship Program, each of whom receives up to $15,000 a year while a little over half of the program funding goes to EAP recipients, each of whom gets $1,200.
Che had disclosed that reduction in the financial awards is expected this year to ensure the continuity of the scholarship program.
