What is a Scholarship Office?
Believe it or not, having an office dedicated to scholarship accessibility is not a resource that many universities have. The majority of universities split the function of scholarship distribution with the financial aid office, which means that financial aid is managing everything like grants, federal loans, needs-based aid, and scholarships. Luckily, here at UNC Charlotte, we have a dedicated team ready to help all of our students find the scholarships that are the right fit for them.
Matching vs. Searching
Our office runs the NinerScholars portal, which is what students use to find and apply for scholarships. This portal is very different from a standard scholarship “search engine.” Matter of fact, we don’t require you to do much “searching” at all. By simply keeping your personal and academic records up-to-date in the Banner Self Service system, NinerScholars will automatically pull in all of the relevant information about you, and “match” you to available scholarship opportunities.
For example, if a scholarship requires you to be a current Freshman student with a GPA of 3.0 or higher, NinerScholars will automatically display scholarships you may be eligible to apply for based on the criteria.
With a standard search engine, you may spend hours finding scholarships that you are eligible to apply for, but with NinerScholars, you will spend less time searching and more time applying.
Using NinerScholars
NinerScholars makes finding and applying for scholarships easier than ever before. Simply login to the NinerScholars portal from our main website at – http://scholarships.uncc.edu – and create your profile. Once your profile is created, let NinerScholars go to work on matching.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t have work to do on your end. Applying for scholarships can be hard work. There are some criteria that NinerScholars cannot pull from your student record, so you'll need to double-check that you meet all the criteria before applying to any scholarships. You’ll also need to be able to produce a great essay that sets you apart from other applicants. Remember that the people reviewing scholarship applications probably won’t meet you in person, so you need to make sure that you stand out on paper. We won’t go into the details of essay writing in this blog post, but know that applying for and obtaining scholarships does take effort.
Many scholarships also require that you prove your merit through recommendations or nominations. NinerScholars allows you to manage all of your recommendation requests in the same place where you build your profile and apply for the scholarships. By keeping everything in a centralized location, we hope that NinerScholars will streamline the application, recommendation, and review process for everyone involved.
Resources
While we hope that NinerScholars is helpful and easy to use, we understand that you may run into issues or technical difficulties. The University Scholarship Office is here to help with any problems that you may encounter along the way, and we will always make sure that you can apply for the scholarships you want on time.
You can contact us anytime between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday.
Email: scholarships@uncc.edu
Phone: (704) 687-5871
Stop by: Cone 346
The original blog was written by Taylor J. Valley, a Graduate Assistant in the University Scholarship Office at UNC Charlotte, and a student in the Master of Public Administration program. It was most recently edited by Katie Franck, an Undergraduate Project Assistant in the University Scholarship Office, and a student in the Bachelor of Science Psychology program.