Chatham Grad Wants Your Social Media Vote

Before Jessica Lowe graduated from in June, she entered a scholarship contest unlike any she'd seen before.

"This one's based entirely on social networking and getting votes through that," Lowe said. "Normally if there's anything like that, it'll be, 'Get votes from your friends and we'll consider you more likely to win the scholarship,' but this one's just entirely, if you get the most votes, then you win the scholarship."

The $3,000 scholarship is offered through a short-term financing company, National Payday. This is the first year National Payday has held this college scholarship contest, and voting ends July 31.

To enter the contest, Lowe wrote an essay on the benefits of short-term financing. Marjorie Lowe, Jessica's mother, said the essay topic was on how short-term financing benefits one's life. "They post all the entries in their blog, and then they get people to vote," Marjorie said.

"What's interesting is, the winner is determined by social media vote. That's it," Marjorie said. "It's like a social media experiment, because there's no merit given to the essays."

The contest gives no benefit to students who demonstrate superb writing abilities, or had perfect grades in high school. Outstanding performance in sports, such as Lowe's spot on the 2012 state champions girls swim team at Chatham High, is not taken into consideration. The only determinant is how many votes the essay entries gain on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

Lowe admits she is not an overly-active Facebook user. "I'm not one of those big Facebook-all-the-time, tweet-three-times-a-day people," she said. By posting this contest to her social media accounts and asking people to vote for her, "I think a lot of people find out I'm still on Facebook."

Lowe tapped into her networks through the Chatham High swim team, the choir and the class of 2012. "Then you get those people who are really nice and post [and re-tweet] it, too," she said.

She has also used her YouTube channel, blog sites and even a singing forum she belongs to, all to promote her essay and get more votes before the July 31 deadline.

For her essay, Lowe took a spin off of the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. "It was, 'If you give a girl a short-term loan,'" she said. "I compared it to, if you just save that cookie, or just take little nibbles out of that cookie, sort of rationing it, comparing it to the loan itself and how that one cookie could take you so far."

Lowe said she's far more likely to save the cookie than want to eat it right away, as the mouse in the story did. "You give me something that's supposed to last me a day, like those disposable razor heads ... I will use those for months."

Lowe even joked her mother would probably find her riding home from Monmouth University in Long Branch, where Lowe will attend college in the fall, on a bicycle to save money on the train or bus.

"No," Marjorie said.