FAQs about MSU Scholarships: Students
Why is a central scholarship and fellowship solution needed?
Centralizing the scholarship and fellowship information could help automate some of these processes and reduce the number of tools and systems needed, thus eliminating mistakes and increasing the visibility and findability of scholarship and fellowship opportunities for students.
How will the central MSU Scholarships system benefit students?
There is no current streamlined process or system in which searching, awarding, accessing, posting, and viewing scholarships and fellowships is easy for our students (including incoming and transfer students), donors, faculty, or staff. Scholarships and fellowships are being created at a high rate due to our fundraising success, but the amount of work required in the current awarding processes (that vary by unit) can yield a high rate of human error.
As student debt grows rapidly, not having a streamlined process for scholarship location and administration puts the burden on our students and many are missing out on valuable scholarships each year because of our fragmented process.
MSU Scholarships aims to create one central place for students to search and apply to all MSU scholarships that they may be eligible for, starting with a phased approach of pilot partner units in November 2017.
MSU Scholarships will help students:
- Find and search for scholarships and fellowship opportunities base don their qualifications.
- Apply for scholarships and fellowships within the online application.
- Monitor progress on scholarship and fellowships applications and awarding.
How does MSU Scholarships work?
MSU Scholarships is accessed at scholarships.msu.edu. Information about scholarships and fellowships will be available to anyone, but to apply individuals will need to log in with their MSU NetID and password.
Scholarships and fellowships for the pilot units will be searchable all in one place. Over the next several years, the remaining MSU units will add scholarship and fellowships data into the system resulting in all the university’s scholarship and fellowship data being stored in one place. This will make it easier to search across our entire institution, maintain information in one place for all of MSU, and collect more holistic metrics.
What is the timeline for MSU Scholarships?
MSU Scholarships, using the AcademicWorks platform, launched in November 2017 starting with the 10 pilot units. These units include the College of Business (partial), College of Music, College of Natural Science (partial), College of Veterinary Medicine, Graduate School, Honors College, Office of Admissions, Office of Financial Aid, Office of Treasury and Financial Management, and University Advancement.
MSU will initiate a phased approach across campus over the next several years that will include all units that manage and award donor funds. For project updates, visit bolderit.msu.edu/projects/students.
What do I need to do?
Login to MSU Scholarships using the "Login" button above and answer the questions on the general application and any additional applications presented to you. The more questions that you answer the more opportunities that you may qualify for.
There are two type of opportunities in MSU Scholarships: ones which you are automatically added to the qualified applicant pool based on your student information and answers to the questions on the applications, and ones which you need to manually apply for.
On the Opportunities tab in MSU Scholarships, any opportunity which you may be automatically matched to will have "None" listed in the Action column. If you need to manually apply to the opportunity, you will see a green "Apply" button in the Action column. Once you click the "Apply" button, you may be presented with additional questions before you submit your application to that opportunity.
Opportunities may be added through the award cycle, so it is recommended that you revisit MSU Scholarships periodically.
Once award decisions are made, recipients will be notified and must return to MSU Scholarships to complete the award process.