I worked hard to get into art school and now I can’t pay for it!
I’m not even sure how to start this. I guess the best way would be to introduce myself, so hi! My name is Nikki Lee. I just graduated from highschool and plan on attending the University of Hartford as an art student in the Hartford Art School this fall. I plan on majoring in graphic design, something I truly love. The only problem in that plan is money, and I’m sure you can guess that’s why I’m contacting you.
I worked hard in school because I knew I wanted to go to college, I knew my parents couldn’t and wouldn’t pay for it, and I knew that my only hope was to earn as many scholarships as I could so that I don’t end up with over $100,000 in student loan debt. Luckily, my hard work payed off …mostly. I was able to earn the highest scholarship my university offers, the Regent’s Scholarship for $15,000 a year. I also received additional aid in the forms of grants and government loans. All the aid I received put together totals close to $30,000 a year, but University of Hartford costs about $40,000 a year to attend. No big deal, I thought. I’ll just take out some private student loans. That’s how everyone else pays for college, after all. Turns out it is a big deal. No private lender will give out a student loan unless the student has a cosigner who’s credit is more than perfect. I tried applying with my dad, my grandmother, my cousin, aunts, uncles. We can not get approved for the loan.
As of this point, I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid I won’t be able to go to school. My grandmother made the suggestion that I look up “philanthropists” online, contact them, and be completely honest with my accomplishments in hopes of finding someone willing to help me pay for my college education. So that’s how I decided to contact you.
As I already mentioned, I worked very hard in school. I took loads of honors classes and AP classes, my QPA is in the high 90s, my SAT score was 2170, I was in the National Honor Society as well as the Foreign Language National Honor Society, and I was an actress in the Woodland Experiemental Theater, participating in plays including “Godspell” and “Crimes of the Heart.” All that I did to help my get into college. Plus, acting is just really fun!
But to get into the Hartford Art School, I needed more than good grades and extracurriculars. I needed a portfolio. I didn’t decide that I wanted to be a graphic designer until my junior year of high school. Most students know that they want to go into art years ahead of time, and they spend years drawing and practicing their art-making so that they can develop into artists any art school would want to accept. My junior year, I knew nothing about drawing or graphic design. All I knew was that I loved playing on photoshop and messing around with website html, and that I wanted to be a graphic designer. But being a graphic designer means putting together a portfolio to get into art school, and most schools require atleast half of the portfolio to be observational drawing, which is not easy. I worked so hard for over a year, and I went from stick figures to portraits. November of my senior year I went for a portfolio review at the art school. They turned me away at first, but gave me suggestions on how to improve my work and asked me to return with an updated portfolio in a few months. After working day and night for months, I went back with my new drawings and was accepted. The woman who reviewed my portfolio was amazed with how much I improved and said that if I could improve that much in such a short period of time, that I had the potential to become a great artist. I was accepted on the spot.
So there’s my little story about how hard I worked to get into that school. And now after all that, I have no way of paying for it. Finding a philanthropist willing to help me pay for art school is really my last hope. I don’t know what else to do. If you yourself cannot help me, please forward this to anyone else you know who may want to help, or reply back to me with their contact information and I’ll forward it to them myself. And even if you want, email me back and I’ll send you some examples of my artwork, just so you can get an idea of what I’m capable of. I feel I’ve worked too hard to get into art school to just throw it all away because of $10,000 a year. Please help in any way you can. If you can help in any way, it would be so much appreciated.
Thank you!
Nikki Lee
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