Engagement opportunities
Thank you for encouraging students you are working with to consider scholarships to support their goals!
UW students are doing incredible academic and extracurricular work, but often don’t realize how they can connect that work with scholarship and fellowship resources. Encouragement and support from faculty and staff can make all the difference in helping students to realize their potential and take their projects and studies to a higher level.
We want to collaborate with you!
Refer students to us
Who?
- Refer undergraduate students and bachelor's alumni to our office for advising about scholarships, other opportunities, and assistance with application processes.
- Don't worry whether or not the students you refer to us are competitive enough for the most competitive scholarships; there are different opportunities that might align with students' goals at different points in their careers.
- For students facing financial emergencies, please refer them to the Office of Student Financial Aid and the UW Emergency Aid program.
How?
- Email us: scholarq@uw.edu
- Call us: (206) 543-2603 or (206) 543-4170
When?
- Anytime! Identifying students anytime from first through junior year (based on expected graduation date) will give them the most opportunities to apply for national scholarships. Seniors and alumni also have many opportunities depending on their plans.
Invite us to your class/department/event
We're here to support your students!
Please get in touch with us for:
- class presentations (any length) related to scholarships,
- materials to share in course materials/sites,
- events you'd like us to attend to meet with students.
We're happy to be flexible to what works for you and your students.
Serve on selection, nomination or interview committees
Thank you for your interest and participation in scholarship application review, interview and/or nomination processes!
Support from faculty, staff and members of the UW community is essential to making scholarships available to support students.
Benefits:
- Serving on campus selection and interview committees is a great way to meet students and colleagues within and outside your department.
- These opportunities also provide more avenues for you to mentor and advocate for students.
- Selection committee service can also be helpful professional development experience.
Let us know you're interested!
Who can be reviewers and what we ask of reviewers
Scholarship review/selection committees
We rely on UW faculty, staff, post-docs, alumni and advanced students to serve as scholarship application reviewers. Most of the scholarship processes we manage are open to reviewers interested in supporting students, from all fields of study and all levels of expertise. A few committees do need field-specific faculty-level reviewers.
What to expect: Depending on the committee, reviewers might be assigned to applications that roughly align with their areas of expertise, interest, or take an interdisciplinary approach. We provide extensive guidance, scholarship information and criteria.
Time commitment: We make every effort to keep the time commitment limited and manageable for committee members. This varies, but we typically aim for several weeks of review time, in which to fit in a few hours to review applications that likely take approximately 10-15 minutes to read, apply selection criteria, score and take notes. Some committees meet to make final decisions (smaller applicant pools). For other committees supporting scholarships with larger applicant pools, committee members may be contributing individual scores and comments on a subsection of applications without meeting.
Scholarship interview committees
A few scholarships we support (Fulbright US Student Program, Bonderman Fellowship, Mary Gates Leadership and a few others) require interviews for candidates.
What to expect: We typically organize teams of 3-4 interviewers to read applications and interview candidates. Number of interviews can vary. We provide interview guidance, scholarship information and criteria.
Time commitment for interviewers: Varies, and we typically ask interviewers to commit to a specific block of time that works for their schedule.
When do interviews happen during the year: Mostly fall and winter quarters.
Mock Interview teams
A few of the national and international scholarships we nominate students for will invite applicants to interview in the final stages of highly competitive selection processes (Marshall, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge, Truman and several others). For these, we coordinate practice interviews for UW finalists to help them feel as prepared and comfortable as possible.
What to expect: We're typically looking for 3-6 participants to serve on mock interview teams, reading application materials and asking UW finalists challenging questions and providing constructive feedback. We provide guidance and details to support participants in roughly approximating the finalist interview experience for the students.
Time commitment for mock interviews: Varies, but usually not more than 1 hour/student (30 minutes for the mock interview, 30 minutes of debrief), plus time to read application materials in advance.
When do mock interviews happen during the year: Mostly fall and winter quarters.
Nominating students for national scholarships
Our office coordinates campus selection and nomination and/or interview processes for many national scholarship programs that require universities to play a role in the application process by evaluating candidates in some way. When university nomination or interviews are required, our office creates application processes intended to make these opportunities widely available to any student interested in the opportunities the scholarships provide, and will set a campus application deadline well in advance of the programs’ national deadline to allow for our internal interview or selection processes.
In addition to providing advising and application support for many other scholarships, we currently nominate or interview UW students for these national and international scholarships:
- Astronaut Scholarship
- Beinecke Scholarship
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Junior Fellowship
- DAAD Graduate Study Scholarships
- Fashion Scholarship Fund
- Fulbright U.S. Student Grant
- Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship
- McCall MacBain Scholarship
- Truman Scholarship
- Udall Scholarship
- UK Scholarships (Gates Cambridge, Churchill, Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes)
- Yenching Academy at Peking University
Support from faculty, staff and members of the UW community is essential to making scholarships available to support students. Thank you!
