One of the most useful tools for scholarship administrators is the Award & Deny screen, a tab where you can examine applicant data, apply filters, and finally decide who receives funds.
The screen is designed to streamline the award process while giving you confidence that decisions are data‑driven, fair and transparent.
Award & Deny screen overview [NEW]
Navigation: Scholarships → Award & Deny Tab in secondary menu.
The Award & Deny screen centralizes applicant data in one intuitive place, making it easy for administrators to review, compare, and award scholarships. With flexible filters, sortable columns, and customizable views, it supports fair, consistent decisions—whether you're managing a small fund or a large applicant pool.
This guide will give you an overview of how to navigate and use the screen effectively.
Let's dive into the details:
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Applicant table: The page offers administrators a consolidated table of all applied students for a particular scholarship.
Each row represents an applicant and displays their status, name, the average reviewer score, and amount awarded this cycle.
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Column Picker: Use the “Edit Columns” button to tailor the applicant table to your needs by selecting which data points to display and in what order.
You can include any profile information (e.g., Student ID, email) or question responses (e.g., GPA, major, financial need). This allows you to focus on the most relevant details for your review process and streamline comparisons across applicants.
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Expand Applicant Details: Click into any row to view a full summary of the student application or view internal notes about the applicant.
Certain questions can be pinned and will appear at the top of the response list for every applicant within the scholarship, ensuring consistent visibility and access to the most relevant data.
Note: Pinned application questions are specific to the scholarship they’re pinned to.
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Scholarship Notes Sidebar: This collapsible sidebar shows important scholarship details like the scholarship description, internal notes, and qualifications to guide your decisions.
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Filtering applicants: Custom filters narrow the candidate list to the applicants who meet specific criteria. For example, administrators can filter to show only students majoring in engineering, those with GPAs above 3.5 or applicants who demonstrate financial need. Multiple filters can be combined.
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Sorting: Click any column header to sort the table. For example, sorting by “average score” shows top-scoring students, while sorting by “amount awarded” highlights those who’ve received little or no funding—making it easy to spot top candidates or those with the greatest need.
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Full Screen View: For a better readability, you can always expand the table area by clicking on the "Collapse Menu icon"
Awarding
Before finalizing decisions:
You may leave internal notes on either the applicant level or the scholarship level to document rationale or internal feedback for your team.
Once ready update an applicant’s status to either Award or Deny.
Click a status button to toggle it on or off. Select Award to mark an applicant for funding, or Deny if they won’t be selected. Click the same button again to undo the decision and return them to a neutral state.
Note: Changing an applicant’s status in this tab does not notify the student. Notifications are handled separately via the Distribution and Notify tabs.
Funds distribution and Award status publishing
After you've selected your awarded applicants on the Award & Deny tab, click on the Distribution tab to:
- Indicate a dollar amount to award each applicant
- Publish/Unpublish the award status
Fund distribution
On this page, you'll see a list of all the students you've awarded, with the individual award amount in the left column.
If a scholarship has a total amount and a number of awards entered, the system splits the funds evenly.
Note: If you don't wish to evenly award all applicants, you can to adjust the individual award amounts manually as you like. You cannot, however, exceed the "Total Award Amount" for the scholarship.
If you accidentally try to award more dollars than you've allocated for this opportunity, you'll see a warning message. Either reduce the individual award amounts or increase the total award amount on the Details tab.
To help you track how many dollars you have left to award, 2 amounts are surfaced at the top:
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Award Amount Remaining - the unawarded amount, calculated in real-time based on the total award amount minus all the individual awards you've entered
- Total Award Amount - the total scholarship value, lifted directly from the "Details" tab for this scholarship Amount Bar
Publish Award Status
Near the upper right corner of the page is the 'Publish Award Status' button:
When you click the button to "publish" the award status:
- Each awarded student will see a banner notification stating that they were awarded.
- Student's status will update from "Applied" to "Awarded" in their scholarship list (for the appropriate scholarship only).
- The individual award amount will be displayed on their dashboard.
- If you've configured any post-award follow-up questions for this scholarship, those items are generated and will be visible on the awarded applicant's dashboard.
After the award status has been published, you may "unpublish" it to return to a hidden state. The publish button in the upper right now reads "Hide Award Status."
Important Note: Hiding this scholarship’s status will permanently remove all associated follow-up items from your queue. Any items currently marked as "Take Action" will not be restored if you re-publish later.
If you intend to keep those items active, visit your queue and complete them first before proceeding.
Some additional notes about publishing the award status:
- Students are not automatically emailed when you publish the status of the scholarship (they just see status updates on their dashboard, etc. as noted above). You can email them on the Notify tab.
- It's not required that you publish the award status. You can award students and notify them via email without ever publishing the status.
Note: If you have After Awarding additional requirements configured (like a thank-you letter upload), you must publish the status to generate those items for students.
What happens once you publish the award status?
This should be done after you’ve selected recipients for a given scholarship and distributed award amounts to each awardee (to learn more about publishing scholarship award statuses, click here).
Publishing a scholarship’s award status causes two things to happen:
1. The award decision becomes visible to the applicant through the Scholarships list view:
2. The follow-ups are created and are visible on the applicant’s dashboard:
To Administrators, follow-ups can be accessed through the left-hand navigation menu, under the Follow-Ups tab: