How Social Media Influences Scholarship Finalists

Applying for an outside scholarship this year? The application may not be the only way that the scholarship committee is choosing their recipients!  Fastweb and 300 members the National Scholarship Providers Association (NSPA) who collectively award more than $1 billion in scholarships each year, participated in a survey that gives us a better understanding of the extent to which they use the web and social media to evaluate their scholarship applicants.

Key findings from the survey included:

1. About a quarter of scholarship providers use web search sites
  like Google and/or social media web sites like Facebook,
  LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to search for online information
  about scholarship applicants. Most screen only finalists due
  to a lack of resources to screen all applicants.

2. Three quarters of the scholarship providers were looking for
  one or more red flags, mostly for signs that the scholarship
  applicant might reflect badly on the scholarship sponsor.
  They wanted to see whether the applicant demonstrates good
  judgment, and were looking for provocative or inappropriate
  photographs or remarks, illegal activities (e.g., underage
  drinking and use of narcotics), insensitive or discriminatory
  remarks or a negative attitude. A quarter reviewed the
  student's online presence to identify or resolve conflicting
  information about the applicant, such as lies about
  qualifications listed on the application form.

3. More than half of the scholarship providers review an
  applicant's online presence to get to know the applicant
  better, to look for creativity and other positive personality
  traits or to evaluate real life communication skills.

4. A third of scholarship providers who reviewed an applicant's
  online presence have denied an applicant a scholarship and a
  quarter have granted an applicant a scholarship because of
  information they found out about them online.

A report on the survey may be found at

http://www.finaid.org/educators/20120224scholarshipscreeningsurvey.pdf

Article by: Mark Kantrowitz, Publisher of Fastweb.com and FinAid.org and author of Secrets to Winning a Scholarship