Recognizing that a number of University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) students are financially needy – who, while having access to tuition scholarships still struggle with day-to-day living expenses – the UP Alumni Engineers (UPAE) put up a loan program that will enable such students to focus their energies on the quality education that UP offers rather than on their day-to-day money hurdles.

The Program
Called Study Now Pay Later (SNPL), the program provides a student loan of P60,000 per school year for students in their third year and up at the College of Engineering (COE).

The grantee receives the amount until his/her fifth year, bringing the total loan to P180,000. The loan becomes due and payable – three years after the student graduates or one year after gainful employment, whichever is earlier -without interest and at the same schedule that the loan was received. This repayment will fund the next set of deserving students availing the Study Now Pay Later Program.

These loans will be available to at most twelve (12) deserving students per batch coming from each of the 12 undergraduate degree programs of the UPD COE.

The loan will be disbursed by the UP Engineering Research and Development Foundation, Inc. (UPERDFI) starting the 1st Semester of Academic Year 2015-16, for three (3) academic years or until the twelve (12) student grantees per batch graduate, whichever comes earlier. Students who shift to non-engineering courses can no longer be part of the program and will be asked to repay the loan.

Selection
The UPD COE Scholarship committee will solicit applications from those belonging to Brackets C, D, and E of UPD’s Socialized Tuition System and enrolled/ qualified to enroll as 3rd year students at the UPD COE. The Committee will provide a short list from where UPAE will make the final choices.

Funding
UPAE shall provide UPERDFI the total funds required for the program in the amount of PhP 2,160,000.00 for the total program period of three (3) academic school years per batch.

How can you help?
Donors can be a company, an individual or a group of friends who will be given the chance to connect* with their “scholar” as they donate the following amounts:
1) one student for one year for P60,000
2) one student for three years for P180,000
3) any amount which we will pool with other donations for this purpose.
*not available for option 3

Donors also have the option to buy raffle tickets in bulk (66 tickets at P2,000 each for a total of P120,000, 6 free tickets) or less (for P2,000 per ticket) for a chance to win an SUV, a small car, and other minor prizes (draw on November 2016). Those joining the raffle will not be issued the certificate of donation.

Prices of tickets in dollars are:
USD 2,500 for 60 tickets (+ 6 bonus)
USD 450 for 10 tickets ( + 1 bonus)
USD 45 per ticket

Please don’t hesitate to call the UPAE Office on how to get your donations to the students who need them. You may issue your checks to the: University of the Philippines Alumni Engineers Association, Inc. or to: UPERDFI (please indicate “for SNPL” at the bottom of the check).

Donations can also be coursed through Paypal (click here).