More of the Right Students, All the Way to Submit

A 30-minute session on building a scholarship application that qualified students finish, so your committee chooses from the students you meant to reach.

Scholarship programs count the applications they receive. Few can see the students who started and stopped.

Those students are not a small group. In a February 2026 survey of 505 college undergraduates, 79% said they had skipped a scholarship they were eligible for because it didn't feel worth the effort (Fractl for Sallie). In a 2026 survey of 625 college students, 31% of those who abandoned an application quit the moment they saw an essay prompt (Sallie).

This session is built around one of the five dimensions of Review Integrity, a framework for judging whether an application and review process is fair, consistent and defensible. That dimension is Intake Proportionality: does what you ask of an applicant scale to what's at stake for them?

A modest award that asks for multiple essays, several reference letters and a transcript, all in one sitting, asks more than many students can give. The students who push through tend to be the ones with the most support.

That changes who wins. A committee can only score the applications that reach it. When qualified students quit partway through, the award goes to whoever finished, and the program reaches fewer of the students its donors meant to help.

It also leaves a question the program can't answer well: when a board or donor asks why applications are down, or why the same kinds of students keep winning, "they didn't apply" doesn't hold up.

Once an application goes live, it's set for the whole cycle. The best time to change what students see is before the next cycle opens.

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In this 30-minute session, you'll learn how to:

• Check your application against what's at stake for the student, and cut what doesn't earn its place
• Spot the steps where students most often stop, and what to change at each one
• Ask eligibility questions up front, so students only complete applications they qualify for
• Let one application match students to every scholarship they're eligible for
• Give students save-and-return, so they don't have to finish in one sitting
• Request reference letters automatically, with reminders and tracking
• Give applicants a status page that shows what's done and what's still missing
• Publish your criteria before students apply, so they know what you're looking for
• Send from your own email domain, so reminders reach students' inboxes

Who should attend

Scholarship program administrators at foundations, nonprofits, associations, credit unions and companies, and anyone who builds the application or answers applicant questions.

Can't make it live? Register anyway and we'll send you the recording.