Paying for college can be stressful! You want to go to your dream college to become something special, but you’re wondering how to pay for it all? What if there were a way for students to monetize their hunt for internships and careers? Stay with me now.

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Breakthru is all about expanding student opportunities, including scholarships, internships, or volunteer opportunities. The scholarship opportunity with the two-time NBA All-Star, Andre Drummond brought a lot of traffic to Breakthru social media channels.

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After the hype, Breakthru expanded our outreach to more than just sports. Students let our company know that they were into watching TikToks featuring a lot of famous influencers and popular trends. Breakthru reached out to the manager of “Sway House” and two major TikTokers claimed their interests in giving back to the community. Josh Richards and Griffin Johnson were both interested in sponsoring one $10,000 scholarship each.

Breakthru was pumped to have these opportunities featured on the Breakthru app for students to get one step closer to their dreams. At the same time, we were thinking about how to boost the opportunities and have them become noticed by as many students as possible.

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According to HonorSociety.org, “Many students must work full time to pay expenses…Scholarships reduce the financial burden for parents and students and offer students the opportunity to attend a great college”.

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Breakthru knows how much effort students put into their school work and it’s our goal to minimize the financial burden as much as possible. That said, since the previous scholarship award was announced on TikTok, we decided to stick to this platform and have students make a TikTok video rather than write an essay. We had all of the applicants for the Josh Richards scholarship apply by making a TikTok video and Josh would duet the winner. After receiving so many amazing applications featuring students’ incredible stories, Josh and Breakthru decided to award the $10,000 scholarship to Jessica Taylor! Be sure to check out the video of Josh Richards duetting Jessica Taylor’s TikTok video.

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Jessica Taylor was a gymnast at her high school and used the scholarship reward to help her pay the tuition at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse where she is aspiring to become a physiotherapist. She was a hard working student and her story was a standout to Josh Richards and the Breakthru team. Jessica represents the many students who study hard and want to achieve big dreams, but they also want to do things on the side which make them unique such as doing gymnastics like she did.

Right after the Josh Richards scholarship winner announcement was on TikTok, Griffin Johnson’s scholarship opportunity went live. We noticed that we had a strong viewer count for the Josh Richards video, but the applicant numbers didn’t add up. It came to our attention that not all students had TikTok because they weren’t allowed to, they didn’t have access to the app, or they weren't comfortable including themselves in the video that would be viewed by the public. So, we made it possible for students to choose the form in which they would like to submit their applications. They could either make a video using TikTok or another video recording app or they could write their submission. We realized that this was a great way to have more students apply to Breakthru scholarship opportunities.

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Through our flexible student resource, we received a lot of applications and finally made a decision to give the $10,000 reward to Imani Bridges from North Carolina who wanted to do competitive dancing and study veterinary science in college. Like Josh, Griffin Johnson announced the winner through the use of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to help encourage our Gen Z audience to keep applying for these open-to-all opportunities. By the way, check out the video of Griffin Johnson announcing Imani Bridges as the winner!

You don’t have to be standout students or the next big name sports player. You just have to be determined and be able to access a mobile device to apply for scholarships or earn financial rewards via Breakthru Badges. Since these scholarships, the Breakthru app is loaded with more engaging and career-beneficial student resources. Download the app now to check it out.

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About the Author: Mandeep Karir is a Sophomore at Baruch College in NYC. He admires NBA player, Carmelo Anthony and his dream job is to be a sports agent.