Point Foundation Wants to Give You Money for School

ALI’S TEAM PICK:

Point Foundation is the largest scholarship-granting organization for LGBTQ students of awesome and their application period to be a Point Scholar begins on November 1st 2012. If you’re going to be enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program for the 2013-2014, you can apply! All applications are to be submitted online. Everyone submits Part I and then qualifying applicants will be asked to submit Part II after that. The deadline for part one is January 14th at 11:59 pm PST, the deadline for Part II is January 28th at 11:59 PST. You may also nominate a student for scholarship and if you work in a school system or just want an extra source of info, here’s a flyer for you to print out.

Point Scholarship funding amounts to about $25,000 per scholar per year (!!!) and that’s not even all– a Point Scholar also partakes in leadership training and a Leadership Conference, and is paired with a mentor for the duration of their scholarship. And after graduation, there’s the crazy amazing alumni network to consider. In return, a Point Scholar agrees “to maintain a high level of academic performance and to give back to the LGBTQ community through the completion of an individual community service project each year.” Basically, this sounds like a ton of nerdy academic fun and it makes my heart beat rainbows and term papers. You should apply!

But don’t take our word for it, see what other Point Scholars have to say via their YouTube channel. (P.S., anyone recognize Maggie Keenan-Bolger? This is a great example of a Point Scholar project!)

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About Point Foundation:

Point Foundation empowers promising LGBTQ students to achieve their full academic and leadership potential – despite the obstacles often put before them – to make a significant impact on society. Point promotes change through education, mentorship, leadership development and community service training, and provides its scholars with the financial ability to attend the nation’s foremost higher educational institutions. www.pointfoundation.org | www.facebook/pointfoundation | www.twitter/pointfoundation

To fund its scholarships and related programs, Point Foundation relies on donations and fundraising events.

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A.E. Osworth

A.E. Osworth is part-time Faculty at The New School, where they teach undergraduates the art of digital storytelling. Their novel, We Are Watching Eliza Bright, about a game developer dealing with harassment (and narrated collectively by a fictional subreddit), is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing (April 2021) and is available for pre-order now. They have an eight-year freelancing career and you can find their work on Autostraddle (where they used to be the Geekery Editor), Guernica, Quartz, Electric Lit, Paper Darts, Mashable, and drDoctor, among others.

A.E. has written 542 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. I’m suprised I’ve never heard of this before! I checked out the website and I’m applying ASAP. Private school is hella expensive, you know… (And quite frankly, I need all the help I can get.) Thanks for posting this!

  2. As a senior in high school there has never been an article more relevant than this. Thanks so much for spreading the word on this

  4. Wow, there are some pretty big problems with the form and I’m only starting to fill it out.

    1. First names with more than one word are flagged as “invalid”. The same might happen for last names, I don’t know. Newsflash: not every name in the world is a tidy FirstName MiddleName LastName.

    2. The first thing it asks you after your login details is the name of a parent or guardian, with NO INFORMATION on whether they will be notified of your scholarship app. I’m lucky in that I came out to my parents, but only just recently and at great risk. This could be potentially dangerous to those who *cannot* be out to their parents or guardians – and it’s likely that a lot of those people are most at need of a scholarship like this. I know my parents aren’t interested in my particular queer-related activities, just knowing I’m not straight was a big thing for them. (I put in my sister’s details just in case).

    I emailed the Point Foundation about this and sadly won’t be surprised if I notice any other similar culturally-insensitive faux pas. Headsup for anyone looking to apply.

    • Well that was quick! Just spoke to Jonathan from the Point Foundation on the phone. They fixed the name thing and they’re not sure why I’m being asked for my parents’ information, they themselves don’t want to know – they figure it has to do with their scholarship form software thing and will check it out. Yay :D

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