Help me pay for college

Hi! My name is Nikol Zyzen. I am a freshman at the College of William & Mary, hoping to double-major in Finance and Computer Science. I love learning, have parent grades, and am very involved on campus. However, I am worried that I won’t be able to finish my education. 

I'm from Ukraine. I came to the US in 2021. I was selected out of hundreds of kids from my country, and fully sponsored by the Future Leaders Exchange program. I spent my exchange year in Texas. At the end of my program in June 2022, Dnipro, my hometown, was repeatedly attacked by the Russian Army, so I could not safely return home. I moved to New Hampshire, where I stayed for another year and graduated high school.  

At that time, I got accepted into my dream school - the College of William & Mary. I vividly remember visiting the college during the Day for Admitted Students with my host family when I immediately fell in love with the place. However, my excitement was mixed with despair. I was walking around the campus and crying. Thinking: "I got into a school that is a perfect fit for me. I'm here. I'm so close to my dream, but it is not accessible to me." The reason for my tears was not getting adequate financial aid from William & Mary, which is a big concern for me since my parents cannot pay for any of my college education. 

To everyone's surprise, I committed to W&M without knowing how to pay. Within the next couple of months, I applied for countless scholarships, worked, fundraised, and managed to gather a total of $61,997 (see all of the checks in the attached). This is almost enough to cover the whole first year at W&M, leaving $5,000 for my family to pay. If we do that, it would mean using all of our family savings and we won’t have anything left for the future or for my mom’s living expenses who just moved to America 2 months ago. 

I created this fundraiser to help me cover the amount that I have left to pay for the spring semester and have some money saved for the remaining 3 years which I have yet to figure out how to fund. I'd be incredibly grateful for any help to make studying at William & Mary possible for me. Your help means the world to me. In return, I promise to keep working very hard and make use of every opportunity to make sure I will be able to pass on your kindness and help other people in my situation in the future. 

Thank you! Feel free to reach out to me via email at [email protected], or phone +13466443648.