Scholarship guide celebrates one year of helping students and parents

By: 
Keeley Meier, staff writer

Submitted photo

Michael and Michell Williams, along with their daughter Kjerstin Hensely, wrote Guide to Full Ride to help others find scholarships and graduate from college debt-free.

By the time Kjerstin Hensley graduated from Brandon Valley High School in 2015, she had received scholarships that exceeded her tuition for all four years of college—essentially being paid to go to college—and received an automatic acceptance into medical school.  
 
With the help and determination of her parents, Michael and Michell Williams, Hensley knew exactly which field of study she wanted to go into all the while knowing she would not have to face the burden of student loans. 
 
Because of her success, the Williams family decided to compile all of their tips and tricks into a comprehensive program called Guide to Full Ride to help others avoid the financial burden of student loans.
 
The guide, which was released in November of 2019, includes six modules and a workbook that both parents and students can follow in order to find and obtain scholarships. 
 
Michael says that he and Michell began the process of scholarship hunting when Hensley was just in kindergarten by cutting out articles of scholarships students were receiving and keeping them in a folder that they continuously added to. 
 
The couple, who started a college savings account for their daughter, say that they had student loans late into their 30s. 
 
“We didn’t want to have that same struggle with our daughter,” Michael said. “Trying to lessen the burden for her was really our motivation.” 
 
Michael and Michell were so proactive in helping their daughter that they met with an Augustana University admissions counselor when Hensley was in sixth grade and asked what it would take for her to earn scholarships. 
 
“They said, ‘Academics are important, but we also look for leadership, school involvement, someone who’s going to be an asset to the culture on the campus,’” Michael said. “They really helped us understand what a college recruiter was looking for and that kind of started our journey in figuring out ‘What are these scholarships?’, ‘What’s available?’ and ‘How do students become qualified for different scholarships?’”
 
After meeting with the counselor, Michael and Michell began helping Hensley stay on track with deadlines, research and reviewing applications. 
 
For Hensley’s parents, though, it was about more than just getting the most scholarships. It was about helping her find her path in life. 
 
This meant letting Hensley try out as many activities as she wanted through The Outdoor Campus, the Washington Pavilion, the Girl Scouts and community education programs. 
When Hensley thought she wanted to be a pharmacist, Michael and Michell asked the Brandon Lewis Drug pharmacist if she could shadow him. After shadowing, Hensley realized she didn’t enjoy the retail side of being a pharmacist, but it helped her realize what she didn’t want to do, Michael said.
 
Hensley participated in a number of activities but all of her own accord.
 
“It’s not living your life through them,” Michell said. “It needs to be them finding their niche and having the freedom to try a bunch of different things.”
 
Sharing the wealth
 
After Hensley graduated from BVHS, parents started to approach Michael and Michell after hearing their success story and asking for advice.
 
“Parents would come to us all the time and say, ‘What did you do?’ Tell us your secrets.’ So, we started meeting with some parents,” Michell said. 
 
The Williams then realized how little information there really was out there about procuring scholarships, so they started to organize all of their tips and turned them into something substantial. 
 
Michael says that parents will often start panicking the summer before their child’s senior year of high school after realizing they don’t know how they’ll pay for college or how to get scholarships. 
 
“We can help them in some degree, but it’s really kind of late in the game to build a resume and build experiences to stand out,” Michael said.
 
The first person that came to the couple, they say, was very shy and not academically gifted. He was, however, a musician. 
 
“We sat him down, talked about his life experiences and got him guided to the right kind of scholarships for him, and that’s kind of what we’ve done with all the parents and kids we’ve sat down with,” Michell said. 
 
Michael added, “You don’t have to be a stand-out athlete or musician or anything else if you find the right niche for your story.”
 
The couple ended up assisting the student in procuring over $8,000 toward his first year of college. 
 
Since then, the Williams have helped many families in their search for the right scholarships and even the right career paths. 
 
Their guide, which features step-by-step instructions, charts and tips, is designed so students can do it all on their own. However, Michael says that in an ideal world, parents will follow along and provide support. 
 
“The golden nugget in this product is that if you follow it as a parent, you’re going to help develop the child to find what they want to do as a career,” Michael said. 
 
They say that this is important because of both the cost of college and scholarships opportunities. 
 
“With the cost of education, it’s just too expensive to go there and try to figure it out,” Michael said. “College may not be right for everyone—it may be a specialty school or vocational-technical experience. It’s going to cost them a lot of time and energy trying to follow a path that’s not right for them.”
 
The couple say that students who declare a major in a certain field will get more scholarships than those who are undeclared, but, they say, that doesn’t mean that students are locked into that field of study. 
 
“It’s crazy to ask a 17 year old to declare what they want to do for the rest of their life, so what we try to do with the product is get a general area of what they want to do, what interests them,” Michael said. “From interests, passion will develop, and it could drive to an ultimate career.”
 
Tips and tricks
 
Michael and Michell say that one of the biggest mistakes that students make when looking for scholarships is that they try to apply to everything or they focus solely on high-dollar scholarships and when they don’t get them, they give up out of discouragement. 
 
The couple says the best way to start is to focus locally and to find your niche. 
 
Michell, who is an IT director, says one of the most important aspects to scholarship hunting is paying attention to the due dates. 
 
“The ones through the college itself are due much earlier than, say, the local ones,” Michell said. “Not paying attention to the timeframes can really kick you in the butt sometimes.”
 
The couple gave an example of a student they knew who missed out on thousands of dollars through South Dakota State University simply because she missed the deadline. 
 
Other recommendations from the couple include having transcripts and letters of recommendation in place since those cannot be procured overnight, having unique and substantial experiences enough to write about and starting as early as you can with the entire process. 
 
Michael, who is a credit card program manager, and Michell just released a scholarship guide that features actual winning scholarships that their daughter used—locally, regionally and nationally. They included commentary about what made it a great scholarship and other tips for earning them. 
 
“What we’re seeing in a lot of scholarship committees is they’re looking for a well-rounded individual,” Michael said. “When we were younger, the people that got scholarships were the 4.0 students or the 1 percent athlete. That’s really changed—they’re looking for a well-rounded person who knows what they’re doing and is making a difference in the world and has leadership qualities that will make a positive impact on campus.”
 
The guide, which can be found on guidetofullride.com, is a way for the Williams family to give back and help others follow their dreams. 
 
“We come from families that didn’t have money to pay for college,” Michael said. “We had to figure it out ourselves, and I think a lot of families are like that. This product is really designed to help people that want to find scholarships to pay for their education, that don’t want to take that huge debt burden out.”
 
Ultimately, though, Guide to Full Ride is not about how much money students can get from scholarships or how many contests they can win. It’s about the personal development that the students experience throughout the process. 
 
“The scholarship is really a by-product of the process,” Michael said. “Who the student becomes—that son or daughter is motivated, confident and they know where they’re going.”
 

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