The 3 Approaches to Scholarship Applications

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Note: we use the term “application” for familiarity, but some institutions use “student profiles,” “bios” or other terms. It may make sense for your institution to avoid the term “application” for a more student-friendly phrase that indicates the optional nature of the form, if applicable. Also, some institutions have decentralized awarding processes that might make use of multiple approaches from the following list. There is no “one size fits all” strategy - be thoughtful about what works best for each department or sub-organization at your institution.

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While it’s true that every institution goes about evaluating students for scholarships a bit differently, there’s 5 core archetypes that 95% of institutions follow. Here they are:

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1) No Application

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Overview

Institutions determine scholarship eligibility without the need of student involvement

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Best For

Institutions whose donor funds are restriction-light and are prioritizing as few restrictions for students as possible

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How to tell if this is the right for for your institution

• Across your donor funded scholarships, can you accurately and sustainably identify eligible students using information readily available in your SIS and/or admissions CRM database(s)?

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Considerations

For many institutions, the realistic answer is many scholarships require information about students that sits outside easily accessible databases… and sometimes even databases themselves are not easily accessible! For example, if you have scholarships with eligibility criteria contingent upon a students’ set of interests, aspirations, work experience, etc., that information is not readily accessible, and therefore cannot be accurately and fully awarded without some type of application.

If you are considering switching to or remaining on the “no application” approach, it is prudent to quantitatively verify how many dollars in scholarships have not been awarded in recent years explicitly due to an inability to find eligible students. You may find that you can unlock tens or hundreds of thousands of scholarship dollars for students simply by launching and sharing an optional application for students to complete.

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2) All-in-One Application

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Overview

Institutions request students to fill out a single form that helps determine eligibility for all scholarships

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Best For

Institutions whose funds are fairly restriction-light but:

• The institution would like to collect additional information to best meet donor preferences
• The institution would like to collect additional information to allocate institutional scholarships more strategically (i.e., directing funds earmarked for student success/retention)

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How to tell if this is the right for for your institution

• Are the questions contained in the application applicably to the vast majority of students being asked to complete it? Example: if there’s an essay question that only applies to a small subset of your scholarships, it can add unnecessary friction as students might balk at the essay and decide not to complete the application

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Considerations

For many institutions, the realistic answer is many scholarships require information about students that sits outside easily accessible databases… and sometimes even databases themselves are not easily accessible! For example, if you have scholarships with eligibility criteria contingent upon a students’ set of interests, aspirations, work experience, etc., that information is not readily accessible, and therefore cannot be accurately and fully awarded without some type of application.

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3) General + Supplemental Applications

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Overview

Institutions present students with a broad “general” application/form/profile/bio to complete, as well as optional supplemental questions that are more scholarship-specific

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Best For

Institutions with wide variety in their scholarship restrictions that are looking to maximize engagement AND overall student eligibility

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How to tell if this is the right for for your institution

• Are there a subset of scholarship restrictions that are shared across many scholarships?
• Is there a long tail of one-off scholarships that ask for specific information about students or essays that don’t make sense to ask all students? Example: if a scholarship is only applicable to upperclassmen and requires an essay about career interests, it doesn’t make sense to be included on a general or all-in-one application that underclassmen will also need to complete.

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Considerations

This is the option that provides most flexibility to institutions that find themselves with wide variety of scholarship restrictions. You can either have supplements show completely separate from the general application (i.e. a separate form that only presents itself to students that are otherwise eligible for that application), or you can include supplemental questions as conditional questions on the general application (i.e., the supplemental questions only show up if the student has answered specific questions on the general application in a certain way). This way, you can maximize the number of students to fill out a short, general application to collect what you need to determine eligibility for 85-95% of your scholarship funds. Then, for the remaining 5-15% of your funds, you can send them individual reminders or follow-ups requesting them to complete short, targeted supplemental questions to fully utilize your funds.

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At Awarded, we help you navigate these options by taking a look at your scholarship restrictions and design your scholarship applications for you in a way that maximizes eligibility and minimizes the ask on students. We also customize the student communications to be friendly, inclusive and transparent. We also have some useful features like automated SMS reminders and push notifications to ensure students always know what they need to do and never miss out on scholarship deadlines. If you have any questions about adapting or upgrading your application process, please reach out!

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