Universal scholarship application: Pros, cons and best practices for organizations
Scholarships provide crucial assistance for many students looking to alleviate the financial burdens and barriers limiting access to education. Yet, amidst growing college costs, only 7% of students will receive a scholarship.
This low rate is not due to denials but rather because many students don’t apply for scholarship opportunities and those who do often find the application process a significant barrier.
But it gets even more complicated—some donors set stringent criteria, resulting in niche scholarships with limited student pools and time-consuming applications. At times, they struggle to find students applying for their funds.
These scholarship administrator challenges can be attributed to complex and siloed application processes. Fortunately, universal scholarship applications create a single entry point for all applications to solve this yearly issue.
Here’s what you need to know about the universal scholarship application, its pros, cons, and best practices.
What is a universal scholarship application?
A universal scholarship application is a system that allows individuals to submit a single application to multiple scholarship opportunities. Students only need to enter their information into the fields once. This saves time for students seeking college funds and enables administrators and donors to access a broader pool of potential candidates.
The platform offers powerful features to streamline the scholarship process, including applications, reviews, approvals, and disbursements. Some of these features include:
- Centralized application platform: The system consolidates all aspects of scholarship application, eliminating disconnected workflows for streamlined management.
- Standardized criteria and requirements: It provides matching criteria for evaluating students, saving valuable time and simplifying the experience for applicants and administrators.
- One-stop resource for scholarship listings: Students don’t have to struggle to search for scholarship opportunities. The system provides student-friendly scholarship processes and a central location for all listings.
- User-friendly interface and accessibility: The system offers a smoother, more user-friendly experience, streamlining scholarship applications across sorting, scoring, and document management.
Universal scholarship applications empower nonprofits and foundations to offer innovative features that enhance student, administrator, and manager experiences.
Everyone benefits. The software centralizes all aspects of the scholarship planning process, giving teams complete control of applications, funds, listings, and applicant pools.
Pros of a universal scholarship application
Managing scholarships involves setting criteria, sourcing applicants, reviewing applications, and reporting outcomes—a complex process that traditional systems aren’t efficient enough to handle.
Conversely, universal scholarship applications offer the following benefits, making them an ideal option for all stakeholders and parties involved.
Streamlines the application process
Online scholarship platforms reduce complexity and eliminate siloed workflows, resulting in a smooth process for applicants, administrators, and managers.
From the student perspective, applicants only submit a single form for consideration for multiple scholarships, saving them considerable time. Only needing to review a single application from students reduces administrators’ workload, making evaluations more effective. It also helps administrators manage different funds more easily in centralized scholarship systems, reducing missed deadlines and allowing them to meet various award expectations.
Increases access to scholarships
Poor access to scholarship opportunities continues to impact students’ education and funding. Up to 42% of scholarships aren’t navigable through search engines like Google, making it difficult to even discover the available opportunities.
A universal scholarship application provides a central point for all college funds to address this issue, improving scholarship accessibility and reducing scholarship admin workload. Students spend less time searching for opportunities, and the ease of discovering and applying for opportunities encourages them to compete for funds they might not have known about.
Reduces administrative burden
Millions of students and families apply for scholarship opportunities every year. Recent data shows that over $100 billion in grants and scholarships are awarded annually, with 1.8 million of the total scholarships awarded by private sources. The sheer volume of applications that administrators process every year grows overwhelming.
Without a streamlined process, the number of applications and funds can easily lead to oversights and missed deadlines, particularly for niche funds. Students lose access to funding opportunities, and scholarship managers wonder why their efforts to help students go unfulfilled. A universal scholarship application gives administrators control over the entire process—from setting criteria to reporting—simplifying their work and ensuring efficiency.
Cons of a universal scholarship application
While universal scholarship applications offer several benefits, they also have a few constraints to consider. However, these potential limitations will be recognizable to anyone familiar with standardization.
Limits flexibility
A universal application can pose challenges when dealing with changing user expectations and requirements, particularly with niche funds with particular criteria. For instance, a fund might require only students enrolled in a specific course from a certain location or school.
In such cases, universal applications may fail to align with donor-specific needs and requirements, leading to pools of unqualified applicants and huge time investments in reviews. This is also complicated when the system doesn’t support customization.
Resource intensive to establish
The idea of using universal applications in scholarship management isn’t new—the challenge has always been adoption. Some organizations may have reservations due to the high initial investments, which impact the buy-in of different stakeholders.
Plus, consolidating all your funds under a universal application umbrella can be time-consuming. The silver lining is that the system offers lasting benefits, making it well worth the effort and resources.
Best practices for implementing a universal scholarship application
When considering whether to adopt a universal application, consider the scholarship application best practices listed below to streamline the process and maximize the impact.
Get buy-in
A successful implementation must involve all stakeholders. To that end, it’s vital to:
- Identify the motivations for the software and clarify its value to key stakeholders to secure a buy-in.
- Use real-world examples and case studies to show stakeholders how the solution will benefit the organization.
- Be transparent about the initial investment to ensure trust, gather invaluable feedback, and create champions for the new solution.
Additionally, share all the pros and cons of universal scholarship applications to ensure informed decisions. If necessary, conduct a trial run to demonstrate the solution’s potential to stakeholders.
Provide clear instructions
As with any new system, it is vital to provide clear instructions and enough support to end users. Ensure students have access to materials on how to use the software, whether via videos or manuals detailing searching for opportunities, completing an application, and viewing statuses.
Remember to train administrators, managers, and other stakeholders to ensure organization-wide adoption and smooth transitions. Module-based training may suit teams best for guiding them along a clear path to mastering the new solution. Training should also recur to cover new features and updates.
Update the application regularly
Regular experiences and workflows are crucial in adapting the application to your unique situation. When building inclusive scholarship programs, leverage the data from the universal application to suggest adjustments to the donor criteria.
For instance, you can encourage donors to change a requirement to a preference to widen the applicant pool, increase donor satisfaction in scholarship management, and solve niche scholarship applicant issues.
Continually review and update the application to reflect student needs with scholarship changes. The aim is to make the processes user-friendly for all parties, eliminate the need for manual tasks, and ensure effective evaluation communications.
Case study: How a universal scholarship application benefits stakeholders
Several use cases and case studies validate the adoption of universal applications in organizations and institutions. Let’s explore one example.
A counseling secretary at a certain high school managed six funds targeting the institution’s students. They had an internal process for selecting students and were reluctant to use an online application.
While the process worked, it was likely prone to unintentional bias, leaving some students without access to the applications. Additionally, the funds were only available through the school’s process, leading to reduced applicant pools for a scholarship program.
The school finally adopted the online application, even though it had reservations. Before, the school anticipated $7,000 of guaranteed funding for its students. But after adopting a universal application, the students managed to win an additional $20,000 in scholarships that the school never knew they could apply for and compete for.
Streamline your scholarship management
While most organizations and institutions have internal systems for scholarship management, these systems often result in disconnected processes and are prone to inaccessibility issues.
The results? Inefficient processes, missed deadlines, and increased workload.
Alternatively, universal scholarship applications provide the right solution to these challenges, delivering innovative features to empower students, managers, and administrators alike. It covers every aspect of the process, from creating selection criteria to reporting.
Students gain a user-friendly system for discovering opportunities and submitting applications. They must only submit a single application for consideration for multiple funds. The system also simplifies the experience for administrators and managers by automating tasks, centralizing data, and offering matching criteria to save time.
At Foundant, we offer scholarship management software to organize, manage, and streamline bursaries, grants, and scholarships. Our cloud scholarship management solution simplifies every aspect of the process and ensures a user-friendly experience for students, administrators, donors, and managers.
Learn how Foundant can streamline your scholarship management.