Scholarship Seekers Toolbox for College Planners and Counselors
Would you like to help families earn thousands of dollars in scholarship money and attract dozens of new clients along the way? With Ben Kaplan’s Scholarship Seeker’s Toolbox for College Planners and Counselors at your fingertips, you are able to leverage the highest-demand area of college finance—big-money college scholarships.
As a professional product, the toolbox is designed to be a turnkey scholarship advisory and marketing system for financial planners, CPAs, educational consultants, insurance agents, college admissions coaches, private counselors, and other professionals.
This innovative two-binder system features informative step-by-step articles, helpful client worksheets, eye-opening scholarship profiles, and key scholarship reference data—including a license to duplicate this essential material for your select clients and prospects.
Additionally, the toolbox features high-impact marketing flyers, posters, and brochures that help you promote the program and sign up new clients.
The system also includes 10 Scholarship Starter Kit CDs for use as “giveaways” to draw in prospects and get them to schedule initial consultations. The cover of these kits feature a space for your business card, which is held in place by the glossy plastic cover. Each kit has a retail price of $40... making them a $400 value that is already included as part of your toolbox purchase.
Best of all, the system is completely turnkey: You can simply distribute the materials to your clients and offer additional advice or guidance in accordance with the normal practices of your firm.
Articles & Worksheets
Under the Articles & Worksheets tab, you'll find a series of action steps that encompass the core of the program’s methodology:
- Action Step #1: Identify Your Scholarship Unique Scholarship Profile
- Action Step #2: Conduct a Personal Inventory of Your Credentials
- Action Step #3: Harvest School Resources
- Action Step #4: Search Internet Scholarship Databases
- Action Step #5: Seek Out Government Funding Sources
- Action Step #6: Explore Personal, Family and Community Leads
- Action Step #7: Track Down Awards From Individual Colleges
- Action Step #8: Create a Priority Scholarship Calendar
- Action Step #9: Brainstorm Your Application Themes
- Action Step #10: Enhance Your Record in Key Areas
- Action Step #11: Scope Out Hidden Judging Criteria
- Action Step #12: Craft an Essay Rough Draft
- Action Step #13: Revise Your Essay Draft
- Action Step #14: Format Your Activities and Honors
- Action Step #15: Develop Quality Recommendation Letters
- Action Step #16: Ace the Interview
- Action Step #17: Earn Free Tuition Credits
For each of these steps, you'll have ready-to-go tutorials and worksheets that you can distribute to your clients. Does a client need help finding scholarships on the Internet? You'll have a helpful worksheet for that. Is a client's son or daughter stumped on a scholarship essay? You'll have a special form for that, too.
Based on interviews with hundreds of scholarship winners, these action steps represent the critical tasks every student must do to achieve scholarship success. These articles and worksheets provide clients and students with everything they need to successfully execute the action step in the most efficient and effective manner possible.
Individual Scholarship Profiles
Under the Scholarship Profiles tab, you’ll find descriptions of 20 leading scholarship programs available to students nationwide. These are all scholarships that you should be familiar with and feel comfortable talking about. Knowing some details about these scholarships can prove extremely useful during seminar Q&A sessions and client meetings. Armed with this information, if you get asked a scholarship question, you can quickly rattle off some scholarship leads that demonstrate your knowledge of the subject.
Winner's Tips & Sample Winning Essays
Under the Winner’s Tips & Essays tab, you will find additional information and analysis about each of the 20 featured scholarship programs. We’ve separated out these value-added scholarship scouting reports—that include insider information, application strategies, and sample winning essays for each scholarship program—so that you can offer a value-added service to your clients and students who are interested in applying for one or more of the scholarships. If a client or student expresses interest in a particular scholarship program, you can photocopy and distribute the appropriate scouting report—thereby providing important advice on how to win the award.
College Tuition Deals
Under the College Tuition Deals tab, you will discover a wealth of data about specific colleges and universities—a series of paragraphs, bullet points, and data tables that describe the scholarship opportunities and free tuition credit policies at these schools. Among other information, you’ll be able to look up key data about what scholarships and tuition credit deals the school offers, how much each award is worth, and what it takes to earn the scholarship or tuition savings. Here’s how this information can best be used: When a client or student expresses interest in a particular set of colleges, look up scholarship and tuition savings information about those colleges in this section. Then you can present the college-specific information to your client or student via an in-person meeting, phone call, e-mail, or written correspondence.
Marketing Materials
Under the Marketing Materials tab, you'll find a series of posters, brochures, and promotional flyers that you can use at your community events, client meetings, and more. Instead of having to sell the program yourself, these materials feature bold visuals and testimonials from other families who have used our system.
Additionally, we've included ready-to-go e-mail templates for your electronic communications and website articles for posting online. We've done the heavy lifting so that you don't have to!
Scholarship Starter Kits
This toolbox automatically includes 10 Scholarship Starter Kits for you to distribute to your clients or prospects. These kits feature a one-hour audio workshop, electronic seminar notes, sample winning essays, introductory worksheet templates, and a starter scholarship directory--plus a handy space to attach your business card.
With each kit, you also receive a license to copy or print materials from the toolbox binders and distribute them to any client or prospect who has received a Scholarship Starter Kit. If you need to order more kits in the future, you can do so at special bulk discount rates ranging from 50% to 75% off the retail price.
Generations Financial Advisors
"We used Ben's system to host a free scholarship seminar. It was scheduled with a tight timeline and we were concerned about being able to generate interest and attendance. That was until we unleashed Ben's incredible public relations machine. The seminar was attended by 220 households with about 600 people total! This event went further to brand me and our firm as 'the college planning expert' in our community than we ever could have done on our own. Thanks, Ben!"
Indy College Funding
"Our results have been amazing. We have been featured on talk radio, local news and local talk shows for free. We have been flooded with new prospective clients who look at us as experts due to the credibility that TV and radio has brought our firm. We have used many consultants and marketing programs in the past that have been useless. The best part about Ben's system is that he tells us exactly what to do, it is easy to do, and it works. It is a huge benefit for our clients and we make money."
Summit Financial Group
"As a result of Ben's program, we have developed relationships with several of the largest high schools in the area, providing them with exclusive financial instruction for the parents of their college bound students. The immediate impact was an avalanche of appointments. The long term impact of sponsoring the event, has been the resultant recognition as the experts in the field of college planning."
Wisconsin College Planning
"Not only has Ben's content and expertise added an exciting new dimension to Wisconsin College Planning, but the demand for follow-up consultations was so strong that we could barely keep up with all of the great leads!"

