Introduction

Fellowships provide funding and/or other resources for academic pursuits. They are typically geared toward graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early career faculty.

Challenges

• Fellowships often require many different documents, such as CVs, reference letters, transcripts, and writing samples.
• Full submission packets are lengthy for reviewers to navigate.
• Review processes may require several steps, with discussion among committee members in between.

Solutions

• The application form (Requirements page) will restrict applicants to submitting materials in the same order.
• Reviewers will be able to export PDF packets of each application, with a paginated and labeled table of contents.
• Build different routing steps for each stage of feedback. Capture pre- and post-meeting scores separately to compare.

Tips

• Collect basic information reviewers need at a glance in the top part of the application form, such as department, degree(s), prior institution, and perhaps a brief personal statement.
• Which file attachments are most important for reviewers to evaluate and make decisions? Have applicants upload those first so they appear earlier in the packet.
• Need reviewers to rank applications? There are three different approaches, described in detail here: How to Rank Applications Using Routing Steps.
• To compare pre- and post-meeting scores, build the same routing step twice (Usually Comments & Ratings is the best fit).
• Use Progress Reports to collect fellowship outcomes to share with stakeholders.

Have more questions about this topic? Go to the Community Forum to pose the question to other users or submit a support ticket to InfoReady.