Everyone loves the idea of scholarships – it’s a noble cause and you get to do something amazing for students while also promoting your business at the same time. However, the major problem is that scholarship management takes time – time which you usually don’t have.
Today, we’ll help you out by showing you some of the biggest bottlenecks you can have as a scholarship program manager. Moreover, we’ll show you how you can get through them with a capable scholarship management app.
If you’re tired of wasting your time without seeing the results – let’s go.
Sending out application reminders
Deadlines are essential for scholarships. The problem is, there is not just one deadline – there are actually several, depending on how many stages your scholarship application has. With each new deadline, the chances of someone missing it increase. After all, students have lots on their minds, and it’s only natural that they forget a scholarship deadline. Even more so, if they apply for more than one scholarship.
Traditionally, the job of reminding candidates was delegated to someone from the scholarship management team. However, with today’s scholarships receiving thousands of applications within a short time frame, it’s just impossible to manage this activity. Perhaps you have the second or third rounds with just a handful of applicants to remind about their deadline, but even this is unpractical.
There are email marketing apps that can do the job on your behalf, but they are just not made for the purpose of scholarship management. Instead, you can use a scholarship management app like ScholarshipOwl for business to schedule all of your email reminders at once. No matter how many rounds there are in your application process, you can make sure that all students are automatically notified about any upcoming deadlines.
Letting your applicants know their status
One of the worst feelings for the students is not knowing where their application is at a point in time. Were they good enough to go to the next round? Did they get disqualified? When is the next round going to take place?
Traditionally, you would update each student about the status of their application. The problem is, if you have 1,000 applicants and only 50 of them move on to round two, that’s 950 emails you have to send to the first group and 50 to the second group. It doesn’t matter that it’s just two different emails that need to go to 1,000 addresses, it’s just a load of work to do.
Of course, this is all handled automatically when you use a scholarship management app. The moment the deadline expires, all applicants are informed about their status. That way, those that are going to the next round get the happy news and those that are not can move on and keep applying to other scholarships.
Managing the first round of applicants
When you create a scholarship, you want it to be accessible to all students of different backgrounds, locations, genders and any other criteria. That’s why you use no barriers for application (such as an essay). In theory, that makes sense. You get lots of applications, the word about your scholarship gets spread further, more students get a chance to get some scholarship money.
In practice, that means that you will receive thousands of applications in the first round and you have to wade through this pile to find the best ones. Not fun.
Instead, you can use a scholarship management app that lets you choose pre-qualification criteria for your applicants. For example, you can add filters such as GPA which students can fill out. That way, your second round is pretty much automatic, since all candidates are filtered immediately. Imagine the time you save since you don’t have to read 1,000 applications at once.
Conclusion
Time is money, and if you’re wasting time when awarding scholarships to students, you won’t have any time for your own business. Instead of doing things the old fashioned way, try using a scholarship management app to shorten the scholarship application process and have more time to promote your scholarship instead.
With that being said, ScholarshipOwl for business is completely free and you can use all of the features we just mentioned in one app. Sign up today to get started!
