Pursue Your Dreams

Due to delays with this year’s FAFSA summary reports, many students have experienced challenges when applying for scholarships. We offered flexible options to help you apply for our scholarships, including:

• Deadlines Extended: We extended deadlines to Friday, April 5, for most of our scholarships that require the general application.
• FAFSA Flexibility: To submit the general application and apply for our scholarships, upload the confirmation email you received after applying for the FAFSA to our system. Once you receive your FAFSA Submission Summary Report (SSR), upload it to your general application to be eligible for our financial need scholarships; all financial need scholarships require the FAFSA SSR report to be eligible.
• SAI Flexibility: The Student Aid Index (SAI) number is provided on the FAFSA SSR or as reported on the California Dream Act Application confirmation page. If you do not have your SAI number from the FAFSA SSR due to the delay, please use the Federal Student Aid Estimator to get your estimated SAI and provide that figure on the general application. All financial need scholarships will require the actual SAI from the FAFSA SSR to be eligible. You must update the SAI on your general applications once you receive your actual FAFSA SSR.

Scholarship applicants occasionally receive error messages when uploading or submitting their FAFSA and/or transcripts and/or letters of reference. If you encounter these messages, please use Google Chrome or Firefox as your browser and ensure the file you’re uploading is saved as a PDF. Make sure the file name does not include any special characters such as a period (.), dash (-), underscore (_), etc. Also, there is a character limit on the file name, so please keep your file name short.

If you still have trouble uploading documents, please contact us at scholarship@sacregcf.org.

Each scholarship fund has its own unique criteria for selecting recipients, including academic achievement, financial need, educational and career goals, background, identities, and more. Annual scholarship awards range from $500 to $10,000 and may be used for accredited academic and vocational training programs.

Once you create an account in our online scholarships system, you will be asked to complete a general application. Based upon your answers, the system will recommend scholarship opportunities that you may be eligible to apply for. You can view all of the open opportunities in the scholarship system, including any additional materials required, such as essay submissions and letters of recommendation.

Each scholarship has an award amount or range visible on its application page. If awarded, the amount will be based on the visible award amount and determined by the scholarship review committee and funds available.

If awarded, you will receive an award offer via email with instructions on how to claim your scholarship.

To claim a scholarship, follow the instructions under Claiming Your Award in the offer email you receive. Upon receiving all required documentation for your claim, we will process the scholarship payment to your school along with a scholarship payment letter indicating the name of the scholarship, the scholarship purpose, your name, and your student ID.

If you were not selected for a scholarship, you will receive a declination notification via email by October.

Most scholarships offered by the Foundation are need-based. To qualify for these scholarships, you must submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or CA Dream Act application. After submitting a FAFSA, you will receive a Student Aid Report (SAR). Please attach a copy of your SAR or CA Dream Act report. If you are not able to apply for the FAFSA or California Dream Act, please submit a complete IRS tax return from the previous year. If you have questions regarding this, please contact scholarship@sacregcf.org.

The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) announced that the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), also known as the Better FAFSA, is now open. Please visit the Federal Student Aid Website for more information. Also please reference the FAFSA checklist for information on how to prepare for and fill out the FAFSA.  

No, we do not recommend this. Please obtain all the required documents prior to submitting the application to ensure a completed application is available for the committee to review.

Please see the essay topic instructions for the scholarship you are applying for. Most scholarship essays have a 500-character limit.

Ideally, the recommender would submit the recommendation letter via an email request provided by the student in the application. If the application does not have the option to input an email and the application asks for you to upload the letter, you can submit the recommendation letter on behalf of the recommender.

We are aware there are some schools that have policies around privacy and need to submit the recommendation letter directly to us. If this is the case, please ask the recommender to email the reference letter to scholarship@sacregcf.org. You will then need to upload a document in the application with your recommender’s contact information and let us know your recommender will submit the recommendation letter via email. It is your responsibility to follow up with the recommender to ensure they submit the recommendation letter to your application or via email if required.

Our recommendations are to save the file as a PDF and to ensure the file name DOES NOT include any special characters such as a period, dash, underscore, etc.

If you are serving as a Reference or Reviewer, you are required to sign up before you can upload the reference letter or review applications. If you are having trouble signing up or signing in, please read this guide: Creating a Blackbaud ID (BBID) for Blackbaud Award and Stewardship Management.

If you/the recommender continue to experience trouble, please email scholarship@sacregcf.org.

We do not recommend using an old reference letter. If you are not able to obtain a current reference letter, we recommend you ask the prior reference to update their letter with current information and current date.

Yes, if you are studying abroad and the college you are currently attending is in the United States, and you meet the scholarship’s eligibility and criteria requirements. You are not eligible if you are not studying abroad and attending a college outside of the United States.

To access your account, please sign in using your email address and password. If you need to recover your password or you have not yet received an email confirming your account, please click on the “trouble signing in” link.

If you are having trouble signing in and get locked out of your account, please wait 30 minutes and try to log back in. If you are unsuccessful, please submit a request to unlock your account to scholarship@sacregcf.org.

If you need to delete your account for any reason, please submit the request via email to scholarship@sacregcf.org.

Please email questions and inquiries to Tina Bryce, Director of Scholarships & Awards, at scholarship@sacregcf.org.