On the cover of the local newspaper

I am soooo overjoyed that I made the cover of the Sentinel newspaper.

The article titled “How to Get a Debt-Free College Education: Local author produces book on the debt-free degree” reveals the tactics that I used to graduate college debt-free. It also discusses the book, “How to Graduate College Debt-Free with Money in the Bank” and DVD set that I have available as well as one of my biggest mistakes that I’ve ever made in my college career and how I overcame it.

Below, I have copied and pasted the full article for your viewing or if you want to read the article on the Sentinel’s website, click here.

 

Published on: Friday, March 07, 2014

Alexis A. Goring, Special to The Sentinel

Local financial genius Shanice Miller graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore Dental College in 2011 with a degree in dental hygiene, debt-free and received $10,000 in refund checks. Now she’s paying it forward with a book and set of DVDs to show others how they too, can go to school without breaking the bank.

“I was able to graduate college debt-free by choosing which colleges really wanted me, which were the colleges that gave me the most institutional aid, and by also supplementing with additional money from private scholarships,” said Miller, who applied for admission to several colleges. “It wasn’t until when I got my financial aid letters back that I learned about automatic scholarships…One college gave me $20,000 but it cost $40,000 to attend and another college gave me $15,000 but they cost $20,000 to attend and then finally I had a college that pretty much gave me a full tuition that was paid for. So instead of going to the college I knew a majority of my friends would go to, I chose the one that gave me the most money because I knew financially, that was the college that was the best fit for me.”

But finding the best fit for college was only the first hurdle.

“After I went to college in that first semester and I saw that you never know what’s going to happen,” said Miller. “I lost that scholarship just by not checking a check box. So I realized I need to have more money than what I need to graduate college and that was when I went to private scholarships and I ended up getting more scholarships than I actually needed, which came back in the form of refund checks.”

But when Miller lost one of her automatic scholarships, she found help in applying for private scholarships which gave her all the money she needed for school. Miller shared what drives her passion to equip people with the knowledge and tools they need to graduate from college and grad school debt-free.

“Just seeing how my friends were,” she said. “I have one friend who was in $100,000 in debt after graduating from college. It crushed him just because you could see the things he wasn’t able to do when he graduated. He got a good job and worked his way up but years after graduating from college he was burdened with that debt. I don’t want anyone to have to go through that.”

Hoping to educate the masses with her success story, Miller produced four DVDs that educate the viewer about how to graduate from college debt-free. The DVDs, which start at a purchase price of $199, are available for purchase on Amazon.com. During the 45 minutes of each DVD, Miller covers the entire scholarship process from where a prospective student can go to find the low competition hidden scholarships to crafting a scholarship winning essay all the way through the interview process. Quite the entrepreneur, Miller also wrote a book, “How to Graduate College Debt-free with Money in the Bank.” The book tells Miller’s story of how she went from not having any money to spend on her college education to being confused and not knowing where to look for scholarships and then how she got her breakthrough.

 

“So many people try to limit themselves saying, ‘Oh, I can’t apply because my parents make too much money’ or they’ll tell me, ‘I’m not the best student.’ I wasn’t the best student either—I wasn’t valedictorian or anything like that—but there were still scholarships out there that I found for me,” said Miller.

The book and DVDs are selling quickly but the rapidly growing success comes as a surprise to Miller whose basic plan was simply to help others.

“I didn’t realize how many people would want this information,” she said. “I had an idea when I started off that my friends were in trouble and I didn’t want people to go through that. Just seeing how many people are serious and really want to know more about this is overwhelming and it really is mind-blowing.”

“I knew I was on to something after I would tell people my story and everyone just looked at me kind of crazy and ask me how I did it, like ‘How were you able to graduate college debt-free?’ To me, at the time when I graduated, it didn’t seem like a big deal but everybody else kind of made it seem like it was a big deal,” said Miller. “It was something I knew to do but I didn’t know how many people had such high student loan debt.”

 

When asked how her parents feel about her graduating from college debt-free, Miller said, “I think they were just happy that I didn’t have to ask them for money or rely on them.”

For more information on how to graduate from college debt-free, visit   www.debtfreecollegegrad.com where you will find free tips on applying for scholarships and may gain access to free video training.

Do you believe that you or your child can graduate college debt-free too? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments.

Happy Scholarship Winning!