OSAC and High School Seniors

The Office of Student Access and Completion [OSAC] gives graduating high school seniors and recent high school graduates access to scholarships and grants to help students pay for a higher education in the forms of university, community college, or career training. The OSAC application is open to all students to help in the search for local scholarships with the early bird deadline of 5 p.m. on Feb. 15 and the final deadline is March 15 at 5 p.m.
The OSAC application gives students access to over 500 Oregon based scholarships, 40 of which they can choose apply for with their OSAC application along with the automatically added Truax scholarship.
“The students I have worked with have between 15-30 scholarships that are recommended for them from OSAC,” Lisa Coplantz, a mentor of South’s Aspire programme, said.
Some of these scholarships require extra documents, including letters of recommendation or additional essay topics, but many can be applied for with the OSAC application alone. The application for OSAC requires students to answer questions about identifying information, contact information, high school background, their college and career interests and plans, and an “About Me” section, along with four “Personal Statements,” limited to 1000 character responses and each with a different prompt. It also allows students to upload an activities chart and allows students to choose a method of sending their high school transcripts.
The OSAC application has two deadlines, all documents must be included and uploaded with application submissions. The final deadline is March 1, but students who submit their applications by the early bird deadline, Feb. 15, are entered into a drawing for one of several $1000 scholarships.
“I would recommend not waiting until the 15th to try to submit applications,” Coplantz said. “Last year OSAC crashed on the 15th and at the the end of the month.”
In addition to this portion of scholarships, OSAC allows students to apply for Oregon Promise and other grants. The scholarships listed on OSAC are not exclusive to students who plan to attend university, there are also scholarships that can apply to community college, technical schools, and graduate schools.
Students who would like more information about the OSAC application, or have questions about completing and submitting their own can look at the Office of Student Application and Completion website, or visit the aspire center in room 234.