Chatham Alumna Finishes First in Scholarship Contest

The honor of winning National Payday's first college scholarship contest went to graduate Jessica Lowe.

Lowe, a member of Chatham High's class of 2012, trailed in second or third place through much of the contest. She was surprised and "so glad that I ended up winning in the end," she said.

in May by writing an essay on the benefits of short-term financing.

National Payday, a short-term financing company, published all competing essays online and asked for people to vote for their favorite using Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus.

The winner was "based entirely on social networking and getting votes through that," Lowe said. "If you get the most votes, then you win the scholarship."

During the contest, Lowe's mother Marjorie said she and her daughter "suspected some vote manipulation," and related their concerns to National Payday.

"We honestly thought the promotor would just declare the 'first place' finisher as the winner. Thankfully, the votes went through a verification process and adjusted accordingly," Marjorie said.

After the votes were verified, Lowe emerged as the clear winner with 1,274 votes. The runner-up earned 1,060 votes.

"It looked like I had come in third, but I guess when you got right down to it integrity trumped all else," Lowe said.

Andrew Allen, National Payday's marketing director, said over 6,000 votes were cast for the 72 essays in the contest. "Of all the authors, Jessica was the most consistently dedicated to promoting her entry," he said.

The scholarship is Lowe's first for the 2012-13 school year. She will begin classes at Monmouth University in Long Branch as a freshman this fall.

To garner votes, she tapped into her networks through the Chatham High swim team, choir and the class of 2012. 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."