Sierra Poroso
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
Oh, yeah. NYU is $80,000 a year. So I just had no idea how I was going to do it. And what happened was after I negotiated my financial aid and started doing really well with scholarships, I started trying to help other students. So I made an account online and now I've helped thousands of students also do the same thing.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
For the financial aid negotiation, I'm negotiating with people who work high up in financial aid at NYU. So NYU has this big endowment. I think it's like multi-millions or billions of dollars. And they get to decide, you know, where this money goes, right? Research grants, students. to be able to help them to go to their institution, right?
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
And so these people who are high up in financial aid, I found their emails, like it's online. And then I emailed them saying, here's my situation. Here's why I can't pay for NYU. And also NYU just came out with the NYU Promise, which also a couple of other universities have done in the US recently, which is if you're making $100,000 or less, they'll give you free tuition.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
So you still have to pay for room and board and things like that. When it comes to scholarships, though, some of the scholarships I did get from NYU, just from like applying, they would look at my grades, they would look at my resume and they would give me scholarships based on that.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
But when it came to scholarships outside of NYU, these are from private organizations that have understood that the US has such high prices for colleges. And so with the money they've gotten from donors, also money that they've gotten from grants from the government, they have created these scholarship opportunities that they let students apply for.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
Yeah, I do. But I also have this belief that college should be free in the US. And that's why I created this platform to help students go to college for free, because it's genuinely my dream to help other students.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
How big a deal would it be if you got access to that second tomb?
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
I didn't even know if I was going to get into my dream school or not. Like I was really nervous about it because my parents didn't go to college. So I applied to 43 colleges, which broke my school's like record because I was like super nervous about it. And I really wanted to go to a good school.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The 'terrible' artist in high demand
And then I got into NYU and I was just, you know, so close yet so far when I got in and I was so excited and happy. But then I found out that they weren't giving me any aid at first. And like as a low income student, First generation college student, well, high school student at the time. I was just really worried, but I also knew that I had to fight as much as I could.