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A cash-strapped high school senior has taken to panhandling to pay for college.
Emily Stutz, 18, says she has maintained a 4.0-4.5 GPA throughout high school but her nearly spotless academic record wasn't enough to secure a scholarship big enough to completely pay for her medical school ambitions.
With her parents unable to co-sign a loan, the Lowell, Massachusetts teen recently started panhandling to make up the difference between her merit-based scholarships and tuition.
Emily Stutz, a high school senior from Lowell, Massachusetts, has started panhandling to fund her college tuition
In an online campaign, Stutz writes that she got into all of the schools she wanted, but that she only received between $11,000 - $18,000 in merit-based scholarships for each school.
That leaves between $20,000 and $30,000 that she still needs to come up with, that she can't pay working her three part-time jobs.
Stutz has applied to public schools as well, but since they don't offer merit-based scholarships, she still has around $20,000 a year in tuition to pay.
'My parents have had immense financial struggles and simply cannot come up with $20,000-$30,000 a year, nor are they able to cosign a loan for me.
'I have no other adults in my life who are able to cosign [a loan] and I am at a loss. I see my dream of becoming a doctor slip further and further away as the days pass by so I've decided I am going to do whatever it will take to get myself to college,' Stutz writes.
The 18-year-old writes online that she received about $11,000 to $18,000 in merit-based scholarships from the private schools she was accepted to, but that she is still struggling to come up with the difference
Determined to come up with enough money to fulfi ll her dreams of studying psychology on a pre-medical track, Stutz started panhandling for money to pay for her tuition this past Saturday at a local Target.
'If people will give to the "homeless" panhandlers then maybe they will consider sparing a dollar or some change to an aspiring doctor who has all the academic, but no financial means to attend college,' wrote Stutz. 'Anything helps at this point!'
Stutz says her first day of panhandling was 'extremely successful' though she didn't say how much money she collected. As of Monday morning, her online campaign had raised more than $14,000.
Source: High school senior with a near-perfect GPA is PANHANDLING to pay for college because the scholarships she won still leave her thousands of dollars short
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