Education & training
Scholarship application
The record on one page, the argument and the documents on the next — so the committee can compare like with like.
Why this survey gets sent
“Four hundred applications arrived. A quarter of them were never eligible, half sent the grade as a sentence instead of a number, and the committee spent its first meeting arguing about what a personal statement was supposed to contain.”
Nothing about a scholarship is hard except comparison. An application that asks for each fact in the shape it will be sorted in — a number as a number, a level as a choice, a date from a calendar — turns a fortnight of tidying into an afternoon of reading.
What is in it
- Name, email, phone, date of birth (required)
- Place of study, programme, level of study (choice)
- Grade average as a number, and what it is out of
- Why should this scholarship go to you? (long answer)
- What will you do once you have qualified? (long answer)
- Transcript and identity document (file upload)
- A declaration that the answers are true and complete
About 9 min to answer
Scholarship application
About 9 min
How to write this survey
Publish the conditions before the first question
Most of the pain in running a scholarship comes from applications that were never eligible. Put the conditions — the level, the field, the minimum average, the age range if there is one, the closing date — on the page that carries the link, and repeat the closing date in the opening paragraph. An applicant who reads that they do not qualify and closes the tab has cost you nothing; one who spends forty minutes and is refused on a rule they never saw writes to the director.
Say what happens next as plainly as you say the rules: when the committee meets, when everybody hears back, and whether silence means refusal. Most of the mail a scholarship office answers is one question — has it been decided yet — and a single sentence at the top of the page removes it.
Two stages: the record, then the argument
An application asks for two different kinds of effort. Names, dates and grades are copying; the statement is thinking. Put them on separate pages, and the applicant who opened the link on a phone during a break can finish the first page there and come back to the second at a desk — which is when they write something worth reading.
Keep the split honest: everything that identifies and ranks on the first page, everything that persuades on the second. Do not scatter a document upload among the contact details — a page that mixes the two sends the applicant hunting for an identity card in the middle of a sentence, and a sentence interrupted is a sentence abandoned.
A grade is two answers, not one
“What is your grade average?” asked as free text returns 3.7, 89%, “excellent”, “first class” and “B+” in the same column, and somebody then spends a week making them comparable by hand. Ask for the number as a number, then ask what it is out of in a separate list. The two together sort, filter and compare; the written version does none of the three.
The same rule covers dates and levels. A start date picked from a calendar sorts into a shortlist by intake; a start date typed as “next autumn” has to be read by a person before it means anything. Every field you can turn into a choice is a report you will not have to build by hand later.
Ask a question instead of asking for a statement
“Personal statement” is a blank wall. Half the applicants write their CV again and the other half write a letter of thanks, and neither can be weighed against the other. A question — why should this scholarship go to you, and what will you do once you have qualified — produces answers that sit side by side, which is the only condition under which a committee can be fair.
Tell them how long it should be and mean it. “About a page” is kinder than a character count and produces the same result, and a stated limit stops the applicant who would have written four pages from burying the paragraph you needed. Say who will read it, too — people write differently when they know the answer to that.
Three files at this stage, and name each one
Three uploads is the ceiling for an open call: the transcript, an identity document, and a reference if you use references at all. Everything else — bank letters, residence papers, medical evidence — belongs to the shortlist, where you are asking ten people rather than four hundred and can ask each of them by name.
Say what you will accept before anybody asks: a clear photograph of a paper transcript is usually as useful to a committee as a sealed original, and saying so removes a week of mail and a fortnight of waiting on an institution to issue something. Then name each upload for what it is — “your most recent transcript”, not “document 1” — so the file that arrives is the file you meant.