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Thousands Apply for Oregon Promise

BEND, OR -- Thousands of Oregon high school students hope to take advantage of the state's new free community college program, approved last year by the Legislature. To be eligible for Oregon Promise, students must graduate with at least a 2.5 GPA, exhaust all other financial aid options and enroll at one of the state's 17 community colleges within six months of completing high school.

 

Applications were due by 5 p.m., Tuesday. KBND News spoke with Endi Hartigan, with Oregon's Higher Education Coordinating Commission, just before the deadline. "We have had a very strong response. As of yesterday [Monday] at the end of the day, we had over 15,000 applications completed and they are continuing today [Tuesday]." She says over a thousand of those applications were from students in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties.

 

Read more about Central Oregon efforts to get students involved in Oregon Promise.

 

Hartigan says initially the agency expected to serve around 6,000 students, but now she says they expect to help around 7,000 students. "Right now, we are predicting the funding for the program will be sufficient to serve what we have projected to be the eligible pool."

 

Students will be notified in the next couple months whether they will receive funding through the program. 

 

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