By Cody Daniels/reporter

A nationwide scholarship and student loan resource is available for NE students starting this fall.

College Fish is an online organization that helps students finance all types of degrees and navigate the various milestones and obstacles involved.

Once students enter the site and create their profile, they can search universities to find one specific to their educational needs.

Then, they can contact that school directly concerning transfer scholarship information, scholarship deadlines, application deadlines and transfer special event dates and times.

Profiles also include transcript evaluations, grades, courses taken, graduation dates and coursework evaluations to see what will transfer to a given school.

Rod Risley, national director of Phi Theta Kappa, established College Fish in 2007. Before this semester, the only TCC students who could access the site were PTK members.

This past summer, NE Campus was granted partnership with College Fish after the NE PTK chapter, along with campus administrators, applied for it.

“We wanted to apply for partnership because we wanted to give our students the tools they needed to be successful in their transfer process,” said NE PTK adviser Shewanda Riley.

Any TCC campus or two-year college can apply for partnership with College Fish. NE just happens to be the only one who has done so, Riley said.

Because students at College Fish partner schools are automatically enrolled with CollegeFish.org, the entire student body will receive an email with their login information to get started, Riley said.

NE students should have access by mid-October, and the link emailed to them will also give students the choice to opt out of the program if desired.

Students are also welcome to attend PTK training sessions to get help with the registration process. PTK training sessions occur at 8 a.m. every Monday in NSTU 1204A.

“Even before sending their application, students can see scholarships that many don’t know exist and can apply to as many as they want,” Riley said.

“The chances greatly increase because College Fish helps one to pinpoint the scholarships and schools that they are most qualified for.”