Daisha Jackson, Psychologist and Scholarship Winner

No Limits

Just 2 years into her time as a psychology undergraduate at Southern New Hampshire University, Daisha Jackson is already planning for grad school— because, with Scholarships.com’s help, she’s managed to set herself for graduation 4 full-length semesters ahead of schedule, with months of study abroad experience to her name, an annual fundraiser she created herself, and absolutely no student debt.

Jackson’s passion for psychology has been with her since middle school. In 7th grade, she took a humanities course that allowed students to create presentations on any topic. Her subject? How trauma impacts the development of the human brain.

“Which was a really big topic for a 12-year-old to start presenting,” Jackson added. But it made sense for her. “I enjoyed helping people; I was always considered the therapist friend.”

Though a specialized education and career in psychology was still a long ways off, Jackson began to research how to make it happen. She discovered a worrisome trend: very few Black women were involved in graduate psychology programs. Even as recently as 2022, 16% of all master’s degrees in the U.S. were STEM-related, and of those, only 8% were awarded to Black students. Taking into account the dozens of non-psychology fields that constitute those STEM degrees— and the gender of their recipients— the number of Black women with master’s degrees in psychology is quite small.

“Once I started learning the statistics, my will and drive grew in the field,” Jackson said. She understood the importance of adequate mental health support, especially in minority communities; as a clinical psychologist, she could be the representation she didn’t have, bringing about real change where it mattered. So she leapt into action as early as she could.

“The requirements being so clear on Scholarships.com helped me narrow down my scholarship search," said Jackson.

Jackson enrolled at the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a career-focused public high school system in Rhode Island. Unlike the typical high school model of sit-down classroom education every school day, students at the Met could spend 2 days a week pursuing internships to gain hands-on experience in the working world.

“I started off interning at Southside Elementary, where I was considered a wellness teacher for K-5,” Jackson explained. “I was able to implement wellness-focused curriculums and observe the psychology of the classroom, so I delved into that.”

In addition to her counseling experience, Jackson dove into entrepreneurship, where she learned many ways to implement psychology into industrial fields. She interned at the Met’s entrepreneurship center and got involved in the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) competition, through which she traveled to New York to present in front of a panel of investors; more and more, she found herself drawn beyond the bounds of Rhode Island.

“I wanted to explore myself outside of my state,” Jackson said, but “doing so involved the financial aspect.” Travel expenses were one thing; out-of-state tuition was another.

“My family wasn’t going to pay $15,000 [a year] for me to go 3 states away,” she said. “They valued independence and wanted me to explore all my options before depending on them.”

So when Jackson entered her junior year of high school, she began searching for scholarships to fund her education. She looked to social media for support by following advocates who promoted scholarships on their personal accounts, but it wasn’t enough. She needed a centralized hub to find more awards. That was when Scholarships.com came into the picture.

“At first I was a little bit skeptical; I saw all these scholarships, thousands upon thousands, and I didn’t know how real or accurate they were going to be,” Jackson said, “until I really went on and saw that you could tailor it to your career focus, your background, your age, what year you’re in.”

Through her free Scholarships.com account, Jackson matched with all kinds of awards, from competitive national funds like the Taco Bell Live Más Scholarship to local opportunities like the Transform Rhode Island Scholarship.

“On other platforms, there would be scholarships that sounded incredible, but oh, you’re not eligible,” Jackson recalled. “The requirements being so clear on Scholarships.com helped me narrow down my scholarship search.”

As her high school experience came closer to its end, Jackson became busier and busier. Her participation in NFTE and internship work ramped up; during her senior year, she participated in a charity trip to Guatemala, where she taught wellness practices like yoga to orphaned children. Scholarships.com saved Jackson the time she needed to stay involved with her psychology and entrepreneurial work while also applying for scholarships— a necessary balance.

Soon enough, it was April, the month Jackson would find out whether or not she’d won the Taco Bell Live Más Scholarship. Its high value and renewability made it incredibly competitive, but if she won, Jackson would be set for college. April 28th was the decision day. She refreshed her email inbox over and over. Nothing came in.

So, regretting the loss but pushing onward, Jackson woke the next day and got ready for school as usual. Her family was away, so she took a moment to rest alone on the couch before heading off to school. Then: a ping from her phone.

“It’s 8 in the morning, and I see: ‘Congratulations! You’re a Live Más Scholar!’” Jackson recalled. “My breath was taken away from me. I couldn’t believe it.”

“...you could tailor it to your career focus, your background, your age, what year you’re in," Jackson said of Scholarships.com.

By her high school graduation, Jackson had used Scholarships.com to win over $35,000 worth of scholarships, not including the tens of thousands of dollars she’d be able to renew throughout college and beyond. Between the Transform Rhode Island Scholarship and the Taco Bell Live Más Scholarship, and a couple others, she could follow her dream of a nontraditional college experience totally debt-free.

It’s been 2 years since then, and Jackson has made the most of her awards in every way she can. She spent her first semester of college studying abroad in Costa Rica, then continued traveling, taking her Southern New Hampshire University courses fully online; she enrolled in additional online learning courses to speed up her undergraduate career and established an annual small business gala along the way.

Now, Jackson is preparing to graduate 2 years ahead of schedule to get a head start on the graduate school application process while she interns at a psychology office in Chile.

“I think the most rewarding part is understanding that there are no limits to my future; there are resources that I can look into that support my life,” she said. “My biggest thing is sharing these resources with others who are unaware of them. I take huge pride in making that education [happen through] word of mouth everywhere I go.”

As Jackson looks ahead to graduate school in Europe and her dream career in clinical psychology, she’s putting in the work to ease the process for others, too. She recommends other students use Scholarships.com to apply for as many awards as possible, no matter how unlikely success may seem.

“Regardless of if you think there are too many people or that it’s too saturated, there has to be a winner,” she said, “and that winner could be you.”

Sign up to receive your own personalized scholarship matches today, sent directly to your email inbox every week. Read more about Jackson’s small business gala on Instagram @a_nightofhope_ri.