Western Washington University’s annual Scholarship Fair took place on Feb. 22. Each of the 408 students who attended the fair received a “Passport to Scholarship Success.”
The passports are intended to be a fun way to prepare Western students for the upcoming scholarship season. Students who turn in a filled-out passport to the Scholarship Center by April 15 will be entered into a drawing for a $1,000 scholarship.
“I strongly believe that preparation and confidence are the building blocks to a strong scholarship application,” said Dina Murphy, the assistant director of Financial Aid and the Scholarship Center. “On the passport, there are nine stamps available that specifically target resources or activities that will actively prepare students to seek and apply for 2024-2025 scholarships.”
Passport stamps can be earned by researching and applying for scholarships, attending the Scholarship Fair and visiting on-campus resources that provide support to students throughout the scholarship seeking process.
Only six of the nine stamps are needed to complete a passport, meaning that students who did not attend the fair are still eligible to participate. A printable copy of the passport can be found on the Scholarship Center website.
There were other opportunities available to students at the Scholarship Fair in addition to the passports, including 15 scholarship provider tables and four expert roundtables.
The expert roundtables offered guidance from scholarship committee members, student scholarship recipients, the Career Services Center and the Hacherl Research & Writing Studio.
Winter Yi, a fourth-year Western molecular biology student, was one of the scholarship winners giving advice at the expert roundtables.
“When applying to scholarships, keep a calendar if you can,” Yi said. “Planning ahead and making sure that you can work on things bit by bit without overwhelming yourself is important.”
Hannah Nevitt, a WWU Education Abroad advisor, was one of the scholarship committee members providing guidance at the expert roundtables.
Nevitt has served on committees for scholarships at the national level, such as the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship and the Critical Language Scholarship. Both of those scholarships are administered through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the U.S. Department of State, Nevitt said.
Nevitt has also served on scholarship committees on a local level at Western, including review committees for the Scholarship Center and the Institute for Global Engagement.
“In being a reviewer for scholarships, we have the opportunity to read several essays and essay prompts which can inform how the most successful applicants are able to share their stories, as well as advocate for how their unique backgrounds, goals, motivations and skill sets best align with the mission of each scholarship,” Nevitt said.
A crucial piece of advice that both Yi and Nevitt emphasized was making sure that your scholarship search is tailored to your individual attributes and experiences.
“Everyone is deserving of scholarship funding, it is really a matter of how to best feature and highlight how your merits and/or needs align with the mission of each award,” Nevitt said.
Xander Johnson (he/him) is a campus news reporter for The Front. He is majoring in Public Relations/Journalism. In his free time, he hosts a radio show at KUGS FM, goes hiking with friends, and loses track of time reading books. Xander can be reached at xanderjohnson.thefront@gmail.com.
