Navigating college scholarships with Scholly by Sallie

According to data from ScholarshipOwl, half of Gen Z students have no money for college, while a Bloomberg report found the average sticker price for an Ivy League University education is over $90,000 a year. Fortunately, there are a myriad of scholarships available to students in the US.

Scholly By Sallie Founder Christopher Gray and Shark Group CEO Daymond John joins Wealth! to break down some of the best ways to avoid student debt and how prospective students can navigate the mass of scholarship opportunities. John invested in Scholly after Gray pitched the service on an episode of Shark Tank. Scholly was then acquired by student loan lender Sallie Mae (SLM) in 2023.

Gray offers this piece of advice for students getting ready to apply for scholarships: "I think that just being able to start as early as you can, and if you do have to wait the last minute, that's fine, people have different responsibilities but that is the biggest mistake. Waiting to the last minute and then just having to rush and do all those essays and applications, you have to submit FAFSA forms, you have to do all of those things. So that's the biggest mistake I see people make."

John instills the importance of education and why students need to apply for scholarships: "There's a lot of great programs out there that want to reward people who are moving in the direction that scholarships and opportunities have been presented. I think that just like in business, your personal business, you can either increase sales or reduce costs. If you can reduce the costs of getting a better education, then in the long run, it's a great payoff."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth!

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Zeroing in on higher education. More than half of Gen Z students have no money for college next year, that's according to ScholarshipOwl. And the sticker price to attend an Ivy League university is more than $90,000 a year, that's from Bloomberg. Now, with the national student debt clocking in at over $1.7 trillion, an education can set your wealth goals back, but it doesn't have to.

So how to use scholarships to lower or even eliminate the need to take out student loans, Christopher Gray, Scholly by Sallie founder, and Daymond John, the Shark Group CEO, are here. Thank you for joining me in this morning. So Christopher, I want to first start with you. If you're one of these students, you're like, I feel very ill-prepared. What are the first steps you should take when looking at scholarships as an option?

CHRISTOPHER GRAY: Well, one which was the issue that Scholly helped to solve is finding the scholarships, right? When I was in college, when I was applying to colleges, I spent more time looking for scholarships than applying for them. And that's one reason why we created Scholly, to make that process super simple, to match you $1 million in scholarship instantly. And then the second thing is applying for them, being able to figure out all the scholarships that you're actually matched with to be able to apply for them pretty easily and, you know, and also just be able to apply for as many as possible.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And Daymond, for people who don't know at this point, Scholly was on Shark Tank. And you went in on Scholly with Lori. What did you see in the education space that Scholly offers that you think perhaps filled a need in the market that wasn't already being filled?

DAYMOND JOHN: Well, first of all, thank you. It was the biggest-- one of the biggest fights in Shark Tank. So three of the Sharks walked off. But what I saw and Chris and Scholly was an entrepreneur who learned himself on how to research and find information and then a platform that gave a double bottom line, not only did it give information but it gave opportunity for those who normally would not know where to find the opportunities. So if you can change the world at the same time as making a little bit of money to help continue to do that, it's a double bottom line.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And Christopher, a lot of people would see an issue and not really try and figure out a way to solve it. How much time can people save by going through something like Scholly? And what sort of opportunities are there outside of some of the traditional scholarships that people think of?

CHRISTOPHER GRAY: Yeah, so with Scholly, like, it took me months to find-- just to find the list of scholarships I wanted to apply for. With Scholly, you can do that in minutes, and actually a lot of our users have done that in minutes. So a lot of students have applied for and won. And we've actually connected students over $100 million in scholarships so far. So that's been just an incredible. So you just save months and months of time.

So no matter when you start, you start your senior year, you start maybe right before your senior year, like, just saving the time or just looking for all those opportunities and putting them right in front of you is just a tremendous gap in just in terms of like making sure that students have access to that funding.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And Daymond, how important is it in closing the gap between people who are thinking, look, college just isn't for me because I just-- I can't afford these loans. And then you have something like Scholly, but a lot of people still aren't aware of just how much they could potentially qualify for?

DAYMOND JOHN: I mean, it's very important. I mean, there's a lot of great programs out there that want to reward people who are moving in the direction that the scholarships and opportunities have been presented. And I think that just like in business, you're a personal business, you can either increase sales or reduce costs. If you can reduce the cost of getting a better education, well, then in the long-run, it's a great payoff. So I think that this is critical.

But a lot of people don't know where to go and they don't know what they don't know. I think that's why Scholly and-- and Sallie Mae and doing all this stuff together is actually-- it's just such a great bottom line for everybody.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And so Christopher, being acquired by Sallie Mae, what does that do for the platform and the accessibility here because a lot of people are wondering, you know, it's sort of a patchwork of trying to figure out these loans, what did that acquisition do for Scholly?

CHRISTOPHER GRAY: Now the app is completely free and now access it's completely free, giving access to everyone. And we are now have given out even more money and millions of dollars in scholarships that are exclusively on Scholly. So now the app has more reach. We've had-- we actually just had our Shark Tank update a few weeks ago. So that was really cool.

So we just seeing just a spike of engagement and just now having scholarships like, for example, Sallie Mae Fund gave the Bridging the Dream Scholarship $25,000 scholarships to 10 students. So we just been giving out money and money, and just now that the app is completely free, you know, it's accessible to everyone. We're able to do that at scale and help even more people. And we've already done that immediately after the acquisition of joining forces with Sallie Mae.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And Daymond, I understand that your school, your Alma mater, one of the recipients of that. For people who were then looking and wondering, OK, I'm trying to plan for this college fund, whether it's a scholarship or whether I should take out loans, when people think about what comes next in the plan of getting that funding and then graduating, what should-- how should they be viewing that timeline and how they should see this as an investment?

DAYMOND JOHN: Well, I mean, I see it as an investment. First of all, reducing the cost and the barrier of entry. But all those who are in that space of college utilize that network, majority of the people that work for me start as interns. And they started working for the CEO instead of in generally working in a company.

Also really targeted in the beginning stages of your career, target really things that are going to reduce the interest and/or the loan of what you have. Don't necessarily go after your career immediately. If you can, I mean, that's great, to actually be able to pay off those loans sooner than later in a career you love, but it's still all about bringing in the funds and the money to reduce your investment.

So that would be my advice for all the kids out there in college. And you know what? Go get a job immediately. You'll either love the job or you'll find out this is not the category or the space that I want to be in because did not have a good time and I want to do other things. So get to work immediately.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: So in the time of the essence, they don't feel like you have to sit in something that's not working for you. Christopher, just quickly, the biggest mistake that you see potential students making when it comes to applying for these scholarships.

CHRISTOPHER GRAY: Waiting till the last minute. I think that just being able to start as early as you can, and if you do have to wait to the last minute, that's fine. People have different responsibility but that is the biggest mistake. Waiting till the last minute and then-- and just having to rush and do all the essays and applications, and FAFSA forms, you have to do all those things. So that's the biggest mistake I see people make.

So I encourage people to use Scholly now. It's easy to use. It's quick. And just start as early as you can right now. People are getting ready to graduate. You know, and I think a lot of high school juniors and people who are currently in college, et cetera, now getting ready to start applying. So start as early as you can.

And also I want to emphasize that the Scholly is actually for current college students as well and graduate students. So we're not just for high school-- high school students. So it's for everyone. Just use it to make sure that you're getting money as possible. But start as soon as you can. Don't wait till the last minute because you don't want to be rushing, trying to do all those scholarship applications and college application, all the other thing, prom, and all the other things you got to do before you graduate.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Yeah, still remember that scramble for those last minute essays. Appreciate that heads-up there. Thank you to both of you. Christopher Gray, Scholly by Sallie founder, and Daymond John, the Shark Group CEO, thank you to you both.

CHRISTOPHER GRAY: Thank you.

DAYMOND JOHN: Thank you.