ScholarshipOWL in 2020: Challenges Lead to Innovation

Necessity is the mother of invention.

– Plato

We can all agree that the year 2020 has been one of great challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world, impacting everyone across the globe, including college students. Many lives were lost, and even more lost their jobs, resulting in significant financial strain.
Despite this devastation, there were some bright spots. Businesses, organizations, and individuals found ways to connect and make a difference. ScholarshipOwl joined this effort. We found purpose and inspiration from the students and families who rely on us. We knew that their need would be even greater this year.
With you all in mind, we leveraged this year’s many challenges, working hard to innovate and rollout many new features. Our goal? To not only make it faster and easier for students to apply for scholarships but also to boost their chances of earning scholarship dollars.
Here is a look back at what we have been able to achieve over the past year:

Updated dashboard that puts you in control

What do you do when you want a radically different experience? You change the controls.
The ScholarshipOwl dashboard is the main driver on our platform – this is where the magic happens. So it was logical to look at it first and do a major overhaul. Our April update included numerous additions:

• new/seen notifications next to scholarships in your list
• new matches notification so you can quickly see your latest relevant matches
• scholarship deadline timer
• status updates for submitted scholarships
• submitted scholarships status tracker
• the ability to ignore/hide scholarships you’re not interested in
• application requirements countdown
• a claim scholarships button, for all you lucky winners
• a separation between active and closed scholarships

Read more about them here and how you can use them to your benefit.

A clearer view leads to better decision-making

A car’s dashboard enables greater control, but unless you have a clear view through your windshield, how can you decide what to do next? The product updates we launched in May were designed to provide that clear view, and to create an improved student experience and better search results. These upgrades are significant, as they put more knowledge and power at your fingertips, enabling you to make better decisions about which scholarships to focus on:

• a more concise, yet comprehensive layout of your scholarship matches
• updated sorting menu
• New filter tools to enable you to better organize your time and energy:

• • deadline filter
  • award amount filter
  • number of applicants filter
  • the ability to filter-out certain requirements
  • a credibility score filter

Read a detailed explanation of these features here and how to use them to your best benefit. May the force be with you.

Knowledge is power

Students often talk about how hard it is to decide which scholarships to apply for – and sometimes this struggle leads to paralysis. If you don’t know where to start, maybe it’s easier to simply NOT start. We wanted to tackle that head-on, so that students can login and immediately start applying.
With this in mind, we launched a new feature – Recommended Scholarships. Each week, each student receives three scholarships that we have determined would be a best match for them. How do we do this? Our smart system utilizes AI to generate these scholarship recommendations, each tailored for an individual student, based on the student’s profile and habits, as well as other factors such as proximity to deadline, number of applicants, etc.
We also added a new feature to help further ensure the scholarships in our system are worth your while – a report button that enables students to let us know if they are concerned about any particular scholarship.
Finally, we’ve upgraded the search bar and added the counter, so you always know how the filters you choose impact your eligibility.
Read more about these updates here.

Just can’t get enough

Our team is quite obsessed with functionality and practicality – or, as we like to say, passionately dedicated.
We received a lot of positive reviews about the functionality of the new dashboard and scholarship filters, so naturally we were inspired to do even more.
Throughout July and August, we released an additional design overhaul of the dashboard and, in particular, the way that your scholarship matches are displayed.
We simplified the design, creating a nice, clean overview of each scholarship. We also updated the design of the upper bar.
The ignore/report button was also implemented within each individual scholarship to create greater efficiency. In addition, we also created a more streamlined workflow by making it easier to view information on the scholarship provider – what their expectations are, who they are, and of course the scholarship details. What’s more, now you can send all of the scholarship requirements from a single tab.
To learn more why all of these are so important, check out this post.

But I still must write

We know what you’re thinking.
It’s great that we have all these scholarships and can be confident in applying for them, but I mean, there’s still writing to do.
And this has commonly been one of the tripping stones for the applicants. So we decided to do something about it this year.
In July, we released our very own cutting-edge editor, showcasing best-known features of all commonly used word processors. And then some.
First of all, it’s a clean mean machine. No distractions, so you can focus on the task at hand. Exceptionally clean environment designed to spark focus and productivity. All the well-known features are there: italics, bold, underline, strikethrough, numbering, bullet points, text alignment, paragraph indents, font color and background color. And – get this – you can now use our very own state-of the-art proofreader.
Secondly, we are all aware that our mind sometimes wanders – it’s easy to steer off the topic. We’ve integrated a special bar within the editor – so the requirements are always a click away. If you’re not sure whether something fits in that awesome essay or motivational letter you’re writing, just click, read the requirements, and decide. On the spot.
Besides these awesome cool features, you can also import the files you need – and there’s the option to export files to PDFs.
That’s all nice and well, but what if I forget to save my document? The editor autosaves every few seconds ?.
We know – everything is there. And we just love it.
Show our editor some love and check this blog post to see the snapshots and learn how you can use it best.

Lose some, win some

We all know how hard businesses have struggled this year due to job losses adversely impacting consumer demand, community lockdowns, and more. As you can imagine, when companies are struggling financially, they sometimes have to scale back their community giving efforts. Perhaps that is why a few scholarship providers in our system had to make the difficult decision to retract their scholarships. Perhaps they simply no longer had the resources to offer them. This is unfortunate for them, and unfortunate for students who had spent valuable time applying for their scholarships.
We understand how hard it must have been for these scholarship providers to make this decision, and we also know how frustrating it must have been for the students who applied. While we of course could not change what happened, we did make some adjustments within our system.
We put the multiple awards scholarships at the forefront – this minimizes the chance of these great opportunities being overlooked. Multiple awards scholarships come from providers who, within the same draw, give out several prizes, either in the same amount, or differing amounts of money. These scholarships are definitely worth your time and effort.
We also lowered the credibility score for the providers who retracted their scholarships, and next to all the canceled scholarships, we placed a “canceled” notification to ensure that students are aware.
Along with the above updates, we also introduced our new application review feature. From now on, you will get a full compendium of your data sent to scholarship providers by ScholarshipOwl. The reason for this is twofold: we strive for complete transparency, and one final glance before sending off your application gives you an opportunity to size your documents and tweak them for maximum effect.
If you’d like to know more about these features, check out this blog post.

An even brighter future

Undoubtedly, 2020 has been a challenging year, in more ways than one.
But we’ve managed to make the best of it by introducing new and improved product features that make it not only faster and easier to apply for scholarships, but that also boost your chances of earning scholarship dollars.
You might wonder what else we can possibly do to improve our students’ experience? As it turns out, we think that 2021 will be our biggest year yet. You won’t believe what we have in store for you! We can’t reveal much yet, but suffice it to say that over the next few months, you’ll start to actually have FUN applying for scholarships! That’s right – soon you’ll actually look forward to applying for scholarships in our platform because of all the goodies we have planned! You’ll also be able to connect and share with students just like you. We will have new features geared specifically for parents as well, so that they can play a bigger role in helping their students through the scholarship process. We are so excited for the year ahead, and can promise you that 2021 will be a great year for students on our platform!
So stay tuned, and be sure to check out our blog for additional tips and tricks, giveaways, essay writing advice and more. And keep applying!