Why many did not scale the document verification-review stage

I know that many applicants would be wondering at what went wrong with their applications. Trust us, nothing that cannot be explained, went wrong.

Here, I will give a brief breakdown on why so many applicants did not pass the document verification-review stage into the interview stage.

To start, I have categorized the possible problems into four (4):

• Missing or Incomplete Transcript.

Transcripts of records were required to be uploaded in PDF format during the applications. Also, it should bear the courses offered in the last year (or at least 70% of the courses), dated and stamped with the official records sheet of your department. Deviations from this meant one thing: the document is invalid and the applicant was screened out. Many applicants fall into this category.

• Missing or Incomplete Recommendation Letter (RL)

The RL was meant to serve two purposes:

a.  Someone that can attest to your studentship and ready to tell of your character, diligence and commitment to your scholarly duties and or any other important qualities.

b.  A point of contact for further information/evaluation in case you secure the scholarship.

Based on these, the RL should come in an official letter-headed document, duly dated with appropriate signature and or stamp. Many documents submitted lacked one or more of these qualities, thereby making it very difficult for us to tell of its authenticity. In some cases we saw hand-written recommendations letters that are nearly illegible, our hands were tied then.

• Content of Motivation Letter (ML).

While there were no special requirements for motivation letters (could come in word document, pdf, with or without address etc.), except the limit of 500 words(which we conveniently ignored), it was a great backbone in the assessment during the review of documents. We required that the ML contains the reasons why we should award you the scholarship. This basic requirements underscore everything; you were to prove that you deserve the investment, that you have a goal in life, a dream, and a change you want to bring to this world, and you must say these convincingly enough. Many just wrote that “They have not paid their school fees” or that “They lost their guardians”. While these are great reasons, half of the applicants says same thing; who then should we give the money. In another post, I wrote on this “Who should investors fund?”

• Number of Awardees needed

This is another last but strong reason, which is not in the control of the applicants. As will be revealed later, this number determined how many very qualified applicants we selected to move to the next round of the interview. So, many did not have issues in the first three points but this fourth point caught up with them. This is not entirely our fault as we cannot fund everyone who applied to the scholarship.

Having said all these, our goal is to ensure all applicants could easily identify what might have disqualified them and learn from their mistakes. For those who did nothing wrong except for point number four (4) catching up with them, do not worry, we will have bigger funding next time to take as many as are possible and necessary.

Thank you