Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

ConE Scholarship Tips

1. Grade point matters. Scholarship donors want a good return on their investment.  Most scholarships look at grade point.

2. Don’t miss the deadline(s). Deadlines are FIRM. If you miss the deadline your application will not be considered.

 3. Fill in all the blanks on applications. When you fill out the online College of Engineering application form, fill in all the blanks.  Yes, it takes a bit of time—about 1.5 hours, so plan ahead. The College of Engineering has a sample form you can look to know the information you may need to gather together before starting to fill out the form.

On the 2007-08 applications that ConE received many students left blanks in areas such as projected year in school, GPA, high school city and state, and financial information. Perhaps the questions seem unimportant, but each question gathers information that donors have requested. For example, in ConE  there is a scholarship that goes to a graduate of a Dubuque area high school. Of the 151 applications that were received for 2007-08, only 71 listed their high school. If you went to a Dubuque area high school, but left that information blank, your name would not have been included for consideration for that scholarship.

The same is true for projected year in school and GPA. Most donors specify if they want to give their scholarship to students in particular years and with particular GPAs. If you don’t fill in that information, your application won’t be considered.

Almost all scholarship donors want to know what your financial need is for your education. And companies want to know what your goals are and what your summer plans will be. You don’t need to write a book—even a few sentences is fine—as long as they know you’ve thought about it.

4. Do your research! If you are chosen to interview with a company for a scholarship, do your research. Look the company up on the Web. Talk to faculty about the company. Find out what the company does. If the company uses initials in referring to itself, find out what those initials stand for. Sometimes that will be the first question the interviewers ask: “What do you know about our company”?

5. Thank you letters are necessary.  Donors want to know that you appreciated receiving their scholarship and how the scholarship will help you achieve your goals. Donors that aren’t thanked don’t become repeat donors. If you need a template to get your thank you letter started, contact April Franksain.

6. Pay attention to e-mails. Students will be notified by e-mail of upcoming scholarship application deadlines. All e-mails are sent to the students’ @iastate.edu account. For scholarships requiring interviews, students will be sent an e-mail giving the interview information and asking for a reply. If you choose to use an alternate e-mail account on a day-to-day basis, you will need to remember to also check your @iastate.edu account.

We are continually working on getting a better distribution of scholarship dollars among all the ConE students.  If you keep these tips in mind, your chances for success will be better!