Website Spotlight: Raise

Starting as early as freshman year, Raise allows high school students to select a portfolio of up to 75 colleges and Universities they're interested in attending and begin earning up to $80,000 in micro-scholarships for their school-based accomplishments.

Get an A? $1,000

Have perfect attendance? $600

Play a sport? $300

And so on...

In the company's first year, 60,000 students from 5,000 high schools have signed up and colleges committed more than $1 billion in scholarships (though less than that was obligated since a student can raise money from multiple schools but attend only one).

49% of those students are from low-income families. So Raise helps them do a few important things:

• It gets them thinking about college much earlier
• It shows them that college is something they can afford.
• And it helps increase their college preparedness by incentivizing students to select well-rounded classes, activities and behaviors and do very well at them.