Welcome to Dan's College Fund web page!
Here you can learn of my college history, my plan to pay for college, and the opportunity for YOU to make a difference.
My college history:
My original college plans out of high school were to major in music education (with a second major in computer science because my parents insisted that music is a hobby not a profession) at either Valparaiso University or Ball State. I also applied to Concordia University River Forest as an alternative, as well as Indiana University Bloomington and Purdue University West LaFayette, both of which I had applied to only because my mother made me and neither of which I was seriously considering. To make a long story short, I was accepted into all five of these institutions academically, but as a mediocre trumpet player with poor practicing habits, Concordia University River Forest was the only school that would accept me into their music department.
Just as I'd decided to go ahead and finalize things with Concordia University River Forest, my senior pastor approached me after church one day and recommended his alma mater, Concordia University Wisconsin. I gave this a whole five seconds of thought before going home. The next day, I receive an invitation from the admissions department at Concordia University Wisconsin to come for one of their visit days. I found this a bit weird, but since weird is my middle name (well, it would be if my middle name weren't Lee...) I decided to go to the visit day. While there, I discovered that CUW is a much prettier campus in a safer neighborhood than CURF, that the faculty at CUW were much more accommodating of my double-major, and that an old friend from high school, Liz (the kind of girl that everyone had a crush on at some point in time) was a student at Concordia majoring in Physical Therapy. This changed my mind a bit about CUW, and after a few weeks of prayerful consideration, I confirmed my enrollment in CUW. Since then, I've become glad I didn't go to CURF, but I won't get into that here...
My first year at CUW was a little rough. My grades were ok first semester, and I can say I definitely learned a lot more (and a lot more useful things) outside of the classroom than I learned inside the classroom. Second semester my grades were a little worse, but I was determined to pull them back up.
Second year was much more stressful for me. My grades were pretty bad both semesters, although I was fully accepted into the music department. It didn't matter though, because I was unable to return the next year due to financial difficulties stemming from the bad grades.
The next two years I spent at Purdue North Central, a satalite campus of the big Purdue that is located near my house. During this time I took 12 credits (the small end of an official full load) while working nearly full time and volunteering with the youth ministry program at my church. If you want to talk about too much too fast, this was it. I had my share of bad grades during this time too, but not quite as bad as my first two years at CUW. Furthermore, the quality instruction and the atmosphere in general couldn't shake a stick at what was avalilable to me at CUW. Also, I changed my major to straight elementary education while at PNC because PNC doesn't have a music department and I was starting to get tired of computer science at that time.
Now I'm back. I just completed my first year back, including six credits of summer school. First semester was a bit of a rocky start, but I definitely did learn during this time. Second semester brought quite a bit of improvement for me. Unfortunately it just wasn't feasible to improve enough to get back all of my scholarships I used to have, although it is definitely achievable by the end of next year. Next year, however, is my problem.
UPDATE: Due to lack of finances, I will be attending Purdue for at least fall semester of 2004. I hope to be back at Concordia by Winterim 2005, and I’m making my plans in that direction right now. All I’m waiting on is a reply from the Financial Aid office to an e-mail that I’ve sent them twice in the last two weeks, and word from Joe in Admissions as to what the proper procedure will be for my drop/readmission.
Without those scholarships that I need next year to get back, I will never be able to pay for next year. My parents will not co-sign another $12,000 loan for me and I really can't afford another one anyway. I've been applying for outside scholarships, but I've had no luck with that yet. Can I get someone to help me out with this? Well, nobody's going to just hand me that much money. That's where my plan comes into play.
The plan:
Nobody's going to hand me $24,000. Maybe it would be easier if I split that up among a few different people. Perhaps if 24 people gave me $1,000. Yeah, like that's going to happen. I know four or five people who might give me $80, but not the 300 people it would require to pay for college that way.
Branching out that far means getting help from people who probably don't know me, and thus would be less inclined to help me. With this in mind, I designed my next division to be as painless as possible to the donor. If 2.4 million people were to give me a penny, I would have no problems paying for a year at Concordia. Think about it--the average stranger probably wouldn't even give me a dollar, but pennies tend to get annoying. Who cares about a penny? So, what I propose, is that 2.4 million people send one of those pennies they don't care about to me. Is that too much to ask?
2.4 million is a lot of people. Let me see if I can reduce that. Because I did raise my GPA back up into good academic standing, CUW is able to give me a little over $7,000 in need-based aid. I'm also willing to take out a small loan as long as its government subsidized, so that's another $5,500. By my calculations, that brings me down to approximately 1.44 million pennies. I don't even need all of these right away, just about 720,000 pennies at first. The rest can continue to come in as people are able to donate, and the other 720,000 pennies will be needed in January.
UPDATE: I won’t know for sure how much I need exactly now until I get a reply from Financial Aid, but I’m guessing it will still be in the vicinity of 720,000 pennies. If all goes well though, I’ll get back at least a part of my church work grants because of my Purdue GPA, so hopefully it will be much less.
So spread the word! Tell everyone you know that they can make a difference in the life of a struggling education student by making a small donation, even as small as one cent. It's not like they're going to miss that one cent anyway...
I will periodically post updates here on the amount of pennies collected. If there is interest, I may start a Yahoo group from which to disburse information about this project as well.
UPDATE: My initial collection has netted me a Tupperware container under my bed full of loose change, which I’m estimating to be about $60. I am still accepting donations, however, as I would like to return to Concordia by January.
How will it work?:
First, people donate by sending at least one cent via PayPal (link at the bottom of this page) or postal mail (you'll need to buy your own stamp, and the address is on the bottom of this page). Once I have collected a reasonable amount of pennies, I will open a savings account and deposit the pennies. These pennies (as well as any interest earned on them) will be used only for school tuition, housing, and academically related expenses (such as books or expenses related to touring with my school-sponsored music ensembles). IF I DON'T GET ENOUGH PENNIES: It's not the end of the world, and the pennies will be used to pay down my student loan debt and I'll go back to PNC. IF I GET MORE PENNIES THAN I NEED: leftover pennies will be used to finance the rest of my undergraduate education. If pennies still exist beyond that, I'll use them to pay down my student loan debt. If there are still pennies left, I may apply them toward graduate school. If pennies remain after that, I haven't decided yet between donating them to CUW or starting a scholarship fund with them.
I should probably note that this isn't exactly my original idea. I heard it somewhere back in the day, but I'm not sure where or from whom. Someone said today that they remember a chain letter back in the early 90s with this plan, maybe that's where I got it from.
Your part:
Send me a penny, or more if you feel the desire to. My postal address is:
Daniel Fulkerson
700 W Highland Rd
Mequon, WI 53097
I also accept PayPal.