10 Reasons an Application Will Not Win a Scholarship

Conventional wisdom has it that if you don’t win a scholarship, you must not have been the most qualified applicant. However, you’d be surprised. A number of scholarship applications, sent by otherwise deserving applicants, are rejected for reasons that may seem unbelievable at first. But these things do happen and can result in your scholarship application being rejected.

After all, scholarship providers can easily receive dozens, if not hundreds, of applications for each scholarship award they hand out. They’re under no obligation to give each application a full and fair reading and are likely under time constraints to judge applications in a timely manner. To help with this, they establish rules about submissions and may also take a variety of unwritten rules into account.

If your scholarship application doesn’t follow the rules of the contest or runs afoul of scholarship etiquette or other ideas of what is appropriate when submitting applications of any kind, the scholarship reviewer is more likely to reject it, possibly even at first glance. Before submitting your scholarship application, make sure it won’t run afoul of any of these reasons an application will not win a scholarship.

1. Applicant mailed the envelope without the application enclosed.
2. Applicant submitted an incomplete application.
3. Applicant forgot to include their name and/or address.
4. Applicant submitted an illegible or unintelligible application.
5. Applicant sent the application with insufficient postage- returned "postage due."
6. Applicant submitted irrelevant or inappropriate supporting documentation.
7. Applicant submitted a dirty or stained application.
8. Applicant applied for an award when falling short of the minimum requirements.
9. Applicant made a number of spelling errors.
10. Applicant was rude or abusive to the judges.