Does SETI actually give out scholarships? Has anyone ever actually gotten one?
Hey all, I started down the path of trying to become an SEP, even though I am not a licensed therapist with therapist income and had no idea how I was gonna pay for it. I am transgender and applied for the LGBTQ scholarship but didn't get one, so took a leap of faith and spent all my savings to pay for the first module at full price. I applied for a scholarship again (and my income had actually gone down in that time) and still, no dice. I had to really scrape things together to pay for the second module, again at full price. I wondered after striking out on getting a scholarship the first time if I was gonna show up to my cohort and see a ton of other LGBTQ and BIPOC folks there who were likely lower income than me even, which would have at least made me feel better about the situation and known that the scholarships were going to the folks who needed them most. But lo and behold my cohort is very much straight white folks dominated and most people are licensed therapists likely able to afford to be there sans scholarship, so I've been pretty confused.
I asked an assistant about it at one point and they shared that they heard that SETI only gives out scholarships to people who are under the federal poverty line..... which blew my mind because people living on under $15000 a year are likely having to scramble to figure out their most basic survival needs and are not likely to be trying to attend an SE training??....and even if they are, the highest scholarship amount is still only a 50% off discount??? How are these 25%, 30% and 50% discounts supposed to help people under the federal poverty line to realistically complete these trainings? Why not have less scholarships but have some of them be full ride and even provide a stipend to go towards food and housing and travel? Anyways, hearing that made me feel like something isn't adding up, and it has made me curious if anyone out there has actually received a scholarship, or if that gets put on the website for show but behind the scenes has been structured to not be realistically accessible to those who need it (below federal poverty level or otherwise!).
I am going to apply one last time for a scholarship, but am probably going to have to drop out of the training if I once again don't get it. Which is really disappointing, because the material has been incredibly transformative, and there are a small handful of other trans/queer/BIPOC folks in my cohort that I really appreciate learning alongside with, and I really want to be able to complete the training to better support the trans folks in my community that I work with and am pursuing this skillset in service of.
I took the leap doing the first module even without a scholarship, hoping that the financial assistance described on the site for LGBTQ folks would become accessible at some point if I kept applying. If they had openly stated somewhere that they only provide scholarships to applicants living below the federal poverty line, I would have known that there was no point in applying and that if I started the training I was signing up for the full cost the full way along. I know the piece about the federal poverty line cut off was just a rumor, but if it is true, I really wish that they had openly disclosed that information before I had already committed multiple thousands of dollars towards this pathway.
Any insight from this subreddit would feel helpful!