ScholarTrack

BRIEF SUMMARY

KEY POINTS

• Apply for state financial aid, such as the 21st Century Scholarship and the Next Generation Hoosier Educators Scholarship
• Complete your Scholar Success Program activities (both high school and college)
• Check the status of your FAFSA, college credit completion, and more
• See what financial aid you are being offered from the state
• Submit and view appeals
• Access additional college and career success resources.
  

RESOURCES

• (Added 10/22/24, Hilary Deardorff, CHE): The Indiana Commission for Higher Education (CHE) has been made aware of a school-side technical issue preventing students from creating ScholarTrack accounts. This affects your middle school and high school students who are/will be needing to:
  • accept their 21st Century Scholars pledge and complete their Scholar Success Program,
  • log Career Discovery Meetings,
  • access their Indiana Pre-Admissions institutions list their senior year,
  • apply for State Financial Aid, and
  • submit appeals.
    • As you can see from the above list, this may affect many of your students. CHE Outreach Coordinators regularly come to your schools through your school counseling offices, JAG classes, etc. to support these students in getting access to ScholarTrack and sometimes have minimal time to troubleshoot IT issues while trying to create accounts for as many students as possible.  Schools must have a specific URL whitelisted so that their Internet traffic permits communication with Google’s Captcha product which is used for ScholarTrack account registration. The act of doing so takes no more than 2 mins for an IT staffer to complete. Our recommendation is for schools to add an exception in their firewall for URLs matching the pattern “https://www.google.com/recaptcha/*”.  Please forward this to your school/district IT staff to complete this task no later than October 31, 2024. Your students should see minimal issues with account creation moving forward when your staff help them create accounts or when our Outreach Coordinators visit your schools.  Furthermore, CHE can significantly reduce burden on your school counseling staff if they can e-mail your students directly regarding programs and requirements 21st Century Scholars, Career Discovery Meetings, Indiana College Core, Career and Technical Education, Indiana Pre-Admissions, FAFSA, etc. Please direct your IT staff to safelist these domains: @che.in.gov and @subscriptions@che.in.gov.
• (Added 8/26/24, Michelle Ashcraft, CHE):  We have noted some questions about Career Discovery Meetings (CDMs) and ScholarTrack and wanted to share a few additional resources.  Your designated Outreach Coordinator is there to support you, including with ScholarTrack account creation. Many schools host them for account creation events (among other activities), so that they can help students create accounts. Students having accounts is helpful for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to signing the 21^st Century Scholar pledge and completing Scholar Success Program activities, logging CDMs, and accessing pre-admissions decisions.  I have also included the ScholarTrack account creation one-pagers (one for all students, and one for 21^st Century Scholars). You can always access these on the Learn More Indiana Materials Library.
• (Added 5/22/24, Hilary Deardorff, CHE): With the end of the school year approaching, we are communicating three processes the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (CHE) Outreach Coordinators will be supporting you through.
  1. Graduation Details reporting for all 21st Century Scholars as well as all non-Scholars who are earning an Honors Diploma will be due via ScholarTrack by June 30, 2024 for the high school class of 2024.
  • Financial Aid for students will be impacted if graduation details are not submitted for the mentioned populations.
  • Click here for additional reporting instructions.
  2. Individual 2024-2025 FAFSA Waiver Forms and Mass Waiving reporting due via ScholarTrack by June 30, 2024.
  • If a student or parent/guardian has opted the student out of filing a 2024-2025 FAFSA or if the school must report for the student through mass waving, that should be entered into ScholarTrack.
  • Click here for additional reporting instructions.
  3. If your school is continuing to participate theIndiana Pre-Admissions: Your Path to College initiative, 6th semester GPAs must be submitted via ScholarTrack for the Class of 2025. The submission deadline is June 30, 2024.
  • Those schools who did not participate last year can do so this year by completing our Pre-Admissions Acknowledgement Form and submitting GPAs via ScholarTrack for all students in the 2025 cohort by the June 30th deadline.

  Dr. Michelle Ashcraft and Hilary Deardorff recently hosted a webinar on he processes for Graduation Details reporting, FAFSA Waiver reporting, and the Indiana Pre-Admissions: Your Path to College initiative.

  • Please find a PDF versions of the slides shared during Wednesday’s webinar attached. Here is a link to the recorded webinar that is housed on our LearnMoreIN YouTube channel – feel free to share with those in your high school/district that will be responsible for uploading this information into ScholarTrack. There is also a link to a VLOOKUP tutorial that is mentioned in the webinar here. I have also included these step-by-step instructions on how to bulk upload and individually update graduation details in ScholarTrack.

  • Please do not hesitate to contact your Outreach Coordinator for support for graduation details submissions through ScholarTrack. Anyone in Region 3 (West Region) on our contact us page: your point of contact for Graduation Details is Griffin Vermeulen, Governor’s Summer Intern for CHE. You can contact him through our Contact Us page or at gvermeulen@che.in.gov.

  • Questions about Pre-Admissions should be sent to preadmissions@che.in.gov.

SHARED WISDOM

• (Added 10/2/23 Michelle Ashcraft & Josh Garrison, CHE): 21^st Century Scholars auto enroll letters are going out in October, as we need to wait for Census on October 2 to finalize the process to ensure we have auto enrolled as many students as possible in this first round and place students in the correct school rosters in ScholarTrack. We will then auto enroll quarterly after that. When we mail the letters, we will be sending a more detailed communication about the auto enroll process to superintendents, principals, counselors, and other school/community partners. Our communications will include reminders that Free and Reduced Price Lunch eligibility is the primary way that students will be auto enrolled into the program. We have identified a process for auto enrolling those who are in community-eligible schools since there will no longer be book waiver lists and will share those details in the communication once we have it finalized with census and enrollment for the 2029 cohort. Those who are not enrolled through Free and Reduced Price Lunch or the additional process for community-eligible schools will need to still apply. Applications will be open October-June each year. We’ll include the date that the application will open this year when we communicate after census. The Commission is able to automatically enroll students through other sources. Below is an where we are at with each cohort eligible for automatic enrollment.
  • 2027 Cohort (Freshmen) –
    • 40,000+ students enrolled in July.
    • Counselors can see enrolled students on an individual basis.
    • Full rosters will be available in ScholarTrack mid-October as we need to wait until after census to assign these students to a high school.
  • 2028 Cohort (8^th Graders) –
    • 40,000+ students enrolled in August.
    • Counselors can currently see the students enrolled by pulling their roster in ScholarTrack.
    • Counselors who have pulled their 2028 rosters have reported nearly all students they believe are eligible have been enrolled.
  • 2029 Cohort (7^th Graders) –
    • We anticipate enrolling 40,000+ students in mid-October.
    • Full rosters will be available in ScholarTrack mid-October.
  • The great news is the Class of 2027 has 20,000+ more students enrolled for the 21^st Century Scholarship when compared to the Class of 2028. Missing a student will still happen and the Commission will work with counselors and families to help any students missed. Families will be notified via a letter with information about next steps and the option to opt out of the program. This is required by state law. We are waiting until after census date for the most accurate contact information. We always appreciate if you share information with students as well. We will share a copy of the letters we are sending families once we are ready to send them.
• (CounselorTalk, 6/2/23): Q: If a student graduates after their Junior year, do I go in and edit/change their cohort year on Scholar Track to reflect the year they graduated (for example, a student who has cohort 2024 who graduated this year – would I edit the Cohort year on Scholar Tack to make her as Cohort 2023? – I want to make sure she can get the Mitch Daniels Early Grad Scholarship.)
• (Michelle Ashcraft, CHE): We do change cohorts in ScholarTrack for juniors who graduate early. Thus, any 2024 cohort students graduating early can be updated to 2023 cohort. (Note: We do not change cohorts for seniors who graduate early in December.) If you need any assistance with updating ScholarTrack, you can contact your designated Outreach Coordinator for your region. Those in the East Region, you can reach out to highschools@che.in.gov until your new Outreach Coordinator is in place.

CONTENT FEEDBACK

If you have suggestions, feedback, or resources, please email counselor1stop@inspiresuccess.org and let us know.