General Entrance Awards

OK. Hello, my name is Lucas Mancini. I am an Assistant registrar in the Dalhousie Registrar's Office. I'm joined today by my colleague in the awards office, John Mark. Hello John. Mark.

Hi, Lucas.

So thank you so much for all of you joining us today for the general entrance award webinar. Just some kind of notes before we get into the nitty gritty of the details. If you have any questions throughout the presentation, feel free to put them in the questions tab and we're gonna do AQ and A at the end of the presentation to give your give you the opportunity to run through these questions. Though I will say because this is an entrance award webinar, please try to keep the questions.

Award related. So if you have questions about awards, scholarships, bursaries, those are the things to be asking about this evening. But without further ado, John, Mark, let's go over the General Entrance award application.

Perfect. Thanks, Lucas. Welcome everybody. Good evening. Don't know where you're joining us from, but it's 8:00 at night here in Halifax, so we're looking forward to just giving you some background. As he said, my name is John Mark, JM for short. You can reach me at awards@dell.ca. That's my contact. We've got a bunch, a few people on our team that can help you out. If I'm not available. Purpose of tonight is just to give you the low down on the general entrance award application, what's required.

And sort of the insurance and outs of that because we are getting down close to the deadline here now we've got a few weeks left for the Gea application. So we just want to make sure that you all know exactly what we're looking at. So we're going to cover a few things tonight. Who is eligible to apply, how you actually go about accessing the general entrance awards application, which by the way, I'm going to call the Gea for the rest of the night. So Gea application, what you actually need to apply to apply to the Gea.

And then we'll just go through it section by section very briefly to try to give you a high level may answer some of the questions you're thinking about. And at the end there, we'll have a few FAQs and an option as Lucas said to drop questions in the question tab for this presentation specifically.

So the Gea generally is for undergraduate students. So we're looking for. It's not for graduate students, it's not for PhD.

This is an undergraduate level program for anybody coming to Dalhousie. It is one application that we assess you for over 2000 awards, so you don't need to apply to multiple awards if you've seen them on the calendar on the websites. It is one application for all of them.

Their awards are broken into 3 categories generally, so we will review all student or all applicants that are eligible for merit based awards which would be primarily based on grades.

That we call scholarships. There are financial need based awards that we refer to as bursaries. And then there's the third category of awards that sort of have a component of both. So we, as I said, we, we look at you for all of the 2000 plus awards in any one of those 3 categories. So the awards range generally anywhere from $1000 one time awards up to $80,000 renewable scholarships over four years. So you can see there's a very wide range of awards.

And a lot.

In the middle there. So there's a lot of one time awards, there's a lot of renewable awards and based on how we assess your application, how you fit into the category, you'll fall somewhere into that realm.

The most important thing if you take away nothing else tonight, the deadline is February 15th at midnight. So the 2nd 11:59 PM you're still good to go. The second it hits midnight and we're on February 16th, the application is closed. You can no longer add to it.

Open it. So do you have from now until then, if you haven't already submitted your application to get it in?

Do not wait.

And all of all of, yeah, I'll of course say just because you can submit it up until 11:59 PM, please do yourself a favor and do not wait.

Until a minute to the finish line. The earlier you can get started on this entrance award application, the better.

Yeah. Thanks, Lucas. You're going to see, I'm probably gonna say that at least twice more through the next 15 minutes or so. Yeah, do not wait. I mean, it's worth doing your application well. But last, do not wait till the last minute because things happen. Computers crash, power outages. Your dog might chew on the power cord. You just don't know what's gonna happen. So I get it in ahead of time. So just generally, who is eligible to apply for the Gea? It is Canadian or international students.

Applying directly from high school. So what I mean by that is we're not looking for people that have come from another university necessarily. There is an exception to that for African Nova Scotians and Make Maggie students, if they've done post secondary elsewhere, they are eligible as transfer students. Everyone else, whether you're from Canada or any other country, we're looking for direct from high school. So that doesn't necessarily mean you're in high school now you're graduating coming right to Dell, it just means the last thing you did in school.

Was high school, so you might be a mature applicant, You might have been out working for a couple years, that's perfectly fine too. But the last thing sort of high school into Dalhousie as an undergraduate student, that's what we're looking for. The minimum average that we're looking for is 80% or predicted IB diploma points of 28. So essentially the minimum bar is 80%. There are awards basically for, you know, they they change depending on your academic status.

Your merit. So they're all over the place, but that's sort of what we're looking at, for you to get in and be eligible for the GE.

So accessing the application, if you have already filled out an admissions application to Dalhousie, it's in the same place. If you haven't done that yet, where you go to fill out your admissions application, the general entrance award application is in the same portal. So you do not have to be accepted to Dalhousie to get the Gea, but you do have to have a completed admissions application. So by that I mean you have to fill out the admissions beginning to end and paid the fee to actually.

Submit your application with the fee paid.

In doing that, it will then open up the General Entrance Award application for you. So if you can't see it, either the application is incomplete or you haven't paid the fee. But as long as you do those two things, you should be able to see the Gea.

And John, Mark, do you have to be accepted to fill out the general entrance award application?

No, absolutely not. So the only thing we're looking for at this point is just that you have applied to come to Dalhousie and completed the application. Do not need to be accepted, do not need to accept your offer. At this point, we're just looking to get as many people into the pool as possible so we can send out offers as quickly as we can.

I.

So what do you actually need in order to apply?

As I said, you need to pay the application fee. You need to actually submit the General Entrance Award application. So it's a whole separate process. There's nine sections we'll cover in a minute.

You've got three of them are required, so you have to fill out the whole application, just the three sections. You can do more depending on what it is, but we'll cover that in a second and actually click submit. There's no feed, there's no anything else. We're just looking for your information.

Click the submit button and then we'll be able to review it. If there are documents required supporting documentation, which we'll cover in just a second, they need to be included. So the thing with the Gea application is once you submit it, it is closed. So just make sure that you do a thorough review that you submit everything that's required in each one of the sections. Read the instructions carefully as you go through step by step and just, you know, at the end, do a thorough review, click submit.

Once you do that.

We'll be able to see it and it's sent to us at that point.

So as I said, there's nine sections to the Gea, three of which are required. So the first section is what we call the Activity section. So what we're looking for here are things you might be doing in your community.

Do you volunteer places? Do you help out at your church or even various community organizations, scouts, guides, sports teams, things like that? So what I will say here is we're not looking for.

Everything you've ever done since you were a child, we're looking for quality here is what we're looking for. So things that you've done over a period of time. So if you volunteered at a soup kitchen once, that's not necessarily the type of information we're looking for. If you volunteered at a soup kitchen over the course of many months or, you know, even if it was maybe once or twice a year, over a couple years, those are the kinds of activities we're looking for. So this is a required section. So if you only have one, that's perfectly OK.

If you have more than one, there's a button that you just Click to add another activity, so you can just keep adding activities so you can start adding multiple things there. The second section is the short answer section. And one thing I will say here is answer only one question. So there are three questions available in the short answer section. If you answer all three, we're only going to read the first one because that's the first one that appears for us. So just make sure and again that's in the instructions, so just make sure you read the instruction, make sure you answer only one of the questions.

And make sure it's the one that you want us to read, because that's that's what will come through.

Yeah, pick the one that's most applicable to you.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you'll if you haven't already seen it, the questions are you know name and time you stepped out of your comfort zone. The third question is if one of these two questions don't fit for you, explain something that's meaningful to you, for us so that we can try to get a sense of who you are as a person, as an applicant, you know as a student, the things you might have done in your life. So there is, there is an option just to sort of leave it open-ended so that you can tell us about something that maybe doesn't fit into one of those first two questions.

The third section is consideration for financial need based awards. This is an optional section. It does require documentation, so if you want to be considered for financial need based awards, we'll be looking for notice of assessments from your parents if you're a domestic student. If you're an international student, we will need some sort of proof of income or tax documents from your home country if you're an applicant on your own.

And you have dependents, then we'll be looking for your personal tax information. So if you're still living with a parent, a family member, somebody that's supporting you, we're going to be looking for their information.

If you have siblings.

Younger, older siblings still living at home. Note that on the application because that's important to know. If you have siblings that are off at university already, note that on the application. That's important for us to know as well because all of these.

Factors are what we consider in your financial need assessment. Again, the instructions are there. I'm just letting you know ahead of time so you you know what you're looking at if you haven't already seen it.

Section 4 through 8. These are the self identification sections so they will be based on.

Gender, ethnicity, cultural heritage, whether or not you have a disability is also included in that. So again, if if you identify with a disability, we'll be looking for some sort of medical documentation for that. The way the Gea is set up, you can literally just drag the document into the box so you don't need to send us an e-mail. Nothing is separate. It's all done right there.

Even just snap a picture of it, drag the, you know, the document or the picture into the into the box and we'll consider that the attachment. So it works quite well for that.

Last section, section 9. This is literally just the formality. It states that you've read everything, Everything you've told us is true and accurate. This is you. You're actually submitting the application for yourself, not for someone else. You sign off your name and submit it, and that's that's final. Once that happens, it's closed down and it's been sent to us.

Before we move on, I'll just highlight, you know for those of you who are thinking, oh I wasn't sure if I was going to apply to scholarships because I'm scared that I don't meet the academic requirements to receive any money. Look how much you can see on what you're filling in. The application is outside of just the pure merit based scholarships, right? So we always say everyone should fill out the scholarship application or the general entrance award application regardless of academic merit because you could be conceivably leaving money on the table.

If you beat some of the other criteria.

That's a great point, Locust. And the other thing to note is we don't offer scholarships without the application. So if you don't fill out the EEA, we're not going to send a scholarship offer. A lot of schools do do that. Dallas is not one of them. So we do, we are looking for the information from you so that we can get a sense of who who we're working with and and try to find an award for the right person.

This year we're going to be notifying people by the end of March, so March 30th at the latest, maybe sooner if there are early award offers going out, those will be going out in the next. They have been going out and will be going out in the next two weeks. So if you're somebody that's got one of those, congratulations everybody else who hasn't received one, we will be assessing the awards after February 15th.

It will take six weeks or less for us to adjudicate the entire program. We'll send out the decisions then. So all the all the decisions are going to come from the awards office. So you'll see an e-mail from us and it's going to say something to the effect of log into your portal to receive your award notification. So same way you would have if anybody is here, has been admitted the same way, it would say check your admission letter that you received is going to be the same with the awards letters. Everything is done through the application portal.

Where you submitted your admissions application, then your Gea application, and then the notifications will also come from there. So we're not going to e-mail you from anything else other than awardsdell.ca visa V the application portal.

So a couple of questions that we get often that I just thought would be good to cover here at least.

Our international students eligible for awards, as I said earlier, absolutely. The only condition we're looking for is coming from high school. So we we're not accepting transfer students except in a few rare situations. Generally we're looking for direct from high school. Doesn't matter where you're from.

As Lucas asked earlier, do I need to confirm my admission? Absolutely not.

So at this point, we just want you to fill out the application, send it to us. So come February 15th, we can do a thorough review of everybody that's in the applicant pool and see if we can't find you an org between 1080 thousand dollars.

And once again, after you've filled out your application and you've paid your alication fee, if you go back into the portal and under the the the requested materials, you're going to see the link to the General Entrance Award application. It's going to be in that same portal that you submitted your application with.

Perfect. Thanks, Lucas. Are we going to re-evaluate you based on final marks? The answer is yes. So the admission status doesn't change initially. What we're reviewing everybody for is based on the admissions average. If your marks happen to skyrocket and change significantly between when you're admitted and February 15th, send this final transcript or a first term final transcript and then we would update the average because our job is to try to get you the money.

We want to give you the best opportunity, so if your grades improve significantly and that will improve your chances, let us know by way of sending a transcript.

And that will certainly reassess based on that, so an admissions deferral.

This is one thing that has changed in the past few years, especially this year. So important to note. If you're accepted to a program for September and you're offered an award, we can move your award to the winter term only. So if you decide to come in January, that's OK, you'll still get your award offer for January. If something happens, as life often does, and you decide not to come and defer your year for, defer your acceptance for one full year.

And you decide to come the following September. At that point, you would have to apply to the General Entrance award application for that current year. So if you don't come in the fall or you don't come in the winter, we will remove the award offer and then you're eligible again to apply for the next cycle of the General Entrance award.

Offered that award and then deferring your offer and kind of losing the award, it doesn't preclude you from applying to the general entrance award application again. You're still considered a direct from high school students.

So you might as well fill out the General Entrance Award application once again when that comes.

Yep. So provided you don't take the year off to go to another university and then come.

That's good, right?

Yes. Well, you're not going to be able to. You're going to have to reapply for admission as well if you do that. That negates your deferral if you do that.

So we, we do see it. Often times people want to leave work for a year, save up a little more money. Absolutely normal. And we encourage coming with savings. I mean, that's a really important part of this whole process. If that's the case, just apply to it the following year. You'll get the same same treatment, same criteria, same eligibility, everything will be the same just one year later. So I think I've covered some of these, but just for the sake of being succinct here, prepare your application now.

Don't wait until the last minute. We're get February 15th is the deadline. It's January 24th, so we're getting close. We've got three or four weeks left. If you are ready, put it together now. Spend some time this weekend. Think about your answers, because once you submit it, it's final.

My pro tip is to you know, if you're writing your short essay, perhaps do it in Microsoft Word or another program and then copy paste it into the application instead of writing it in the application. It makes it easier for you to look it over, edit it, go back to it, make sure you're happy with it, and then when it's the finished product, you can put it into the application.

Nice solid pro tip, Lucas. Thank you.

As I mentioned, consider the quality. So we're not looking for, you know, there there is a character limit for the answers. We're not looking for big long stories. Just tell us about yourself. We want to know what you've done about your volunteerism, your community engagement, your leadership capabilities. Those are all qualities that we are looking for in scholarship candidates for all of the three categories, as I said. So it's not all grades, it is a lot of these things are based on financial need.

And your commitment to other things other than those two things.

So just double check each section before you finish the last.

Section will be a review section. Read it over. Read it out loud, read it to somebody. Just make sure that you're comfortable with what you're submitting, because once it once you click submit, it's locked in and we'll have it at that point. And just make sure that any documents that you need, so the notice of assessments, the tax documents, T fours, employment letters, doctors letters, anything like that, make sure you've attached those to the application before you submit it, because at that point it's it's not impossible if you forget.

We can solve that, that's not a problem, but let's try to avoid that by doing it correctly in the first place.

You're going to be doing yourself a favor, and you're going to be making your life easier if you attach it in the actual application.

Yeah. So as I said earlier, we want to try to get you a scholarship. Our job is to try to help you to fund some or all of your education depending on where you land. So all I'm asking of all of you that are here is for you to do your part, fill out the application, fill it out completely, follow the instructions and get it in before midnight on February 15th.

That's right. I always like to describe it as there's money on the table and it's up to you to reach out and and take the money from the table. And if you don't follow these processes the correct way, you are conceivable conceivably leaving money on the table.

So before we get into the general turn the tables and allow you to ask your questions, just keep in mind that if you have any follow up questions regarding general entrance awards, you can e-mail John Mark's office at awards at dow.ca. If your questions are kind of outside the realm of awards and they're more based off general Dalhousie admissions or you're looking for advising in regards to applying to Dalhousie, that's what you're going to utilizedow.ca/connect and that will get you.

In contact with an assistant registrar like myself.

Perfect.

I'm happy to go over all of those questions for you, but today we're talking about general entrance awards. So let me know if you have any questions in the questions tab and we'll get through them. I see that there's already quite a few questions, so let's get into this.

Matthew asks what support do you need for evidence of disability?

Would the Canada Revenue Agency disability letter be enough?

Absolutely. That's about as official as it can get. Presumably if you've gotten that letter, you've already jumped through enough hoops to get there. We're not trying to make anything more difficult for you. We just want to see some sort of representation. A letter from, yes, CRA letter would absolutely do it. Doctor's letter would also do it. An assessment. You know, we've seen assessments for ADHD, whatever it might be. Anything like that will suffice as the required documentation.

A follow up question on that John Mark, does the applicant get considered in both the disability and academic awards? If one is awarded? Would it not be considered for academic or vice versa?

I.

That's a great question. Thanks for that because that's it's important to highlight that you can get multiple awards. We don't just give one award and you're done. You can get one award in each of the categories. So if you are assessed, we find an award that matches you perfectly as a result of having a disability. That's only one of the three categories that you might be able to get an award for. So it is it is possible that you can receive multiple awards.

Kind of a 22 part question here. Jack asks. I submitted my application but did not have my parents tax filing information. How do I send that now? So I'm assuming he's talking about his General Entrance award application and not his admission application.

How can he get that to you, John? Mark?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Jack. You'll be hearing from us. We're actually we're we're working through a lot of the files right now that are already submitted. If they're missing documents, we're going to e-mail you and just figure it a way for you to get us that document so we can attach it to your file.

And Jack also asked, when I send my updated transcript to Dow, will it automatically go to the awards office for consideration?

Yeah.

It's going to go through admissions. So they will give us an updated, if the average changes, they will give us an updated average. It doesn't come to us directly because our our office doesn't calculate the the averages. We're using our admissions team that's their expertise. They will look at it and let us know if the update.

I think to clarify for Michael, Michael would not be considered a direct entry undergraduate student, They would be considered instead of transfers applicant and they would not be able to apply for general entrance awards. Is that correct John? Mark?

Yeah, that's right. Because you're studying at NSCC is a college. It's considered post secondary. It's after high school. So unfortunately in your case.

Great job that you're going to NSCC. We still hope we can see it now, but you wouldn't be eligible to the entrance award application because you would be looked at as a transfer student.

This is a really good question that we Jack asks. Is the entrance award application timed? In other words, when you open the application in the portal, do you have a certain amount of time to complete it?

No, no it isn't. I don't mean to laugh. That would be a cruel punishment that anybody trying to fill this out. There's enough pressure on high school students trying to figure out what to do next. We certainly would not do that to you. You can go back in until you submit it. You can go back in 1000 times if you want and update anything. Essentially it's it's an open page. Once you start it, it's there for you to change, modify, go in, delete, Add all the way up to the last time when you submit it. Then it's over, but up till then it's yours.

Only until February 15th.

I was just gonna say it is timed in a sense. Said that that clock runs out 1159 the night before February 15th.

Emma's asking essentially is the the parents income section optional?

It is. I mean it's so if you want to be considered for financial need based awards, we need some information. So if you're unable to provide the information, there is a section called special circumstance where you would explain that we'll make a decision based on that. But generally anybody who is looking to be assessed for financial need based awards, we do need some kind of.

Information whether it be about your parents, about you, a support person, if you're living with grandparents.

Things of that nature, just so we can make an accurate assessment as to your financial need.

We have a question here. What happens to the scholarship money if your scholarship is more than all of the university fees?

That's a great question. So scholarships are designed specifically to pay towards tuition, so they go on your student account. If your scholarship is such that you have more scholarship than you have fees once the fee deadline passes, so it's roughly the third week of September, roughly the third week of January. If you have more scholarship money on your account than fees, after the fee deadline, you can contact student accounts and ask for a refund and they will E transfer you the difference.

This is kind of a.

This question Caitlin asks how many characters are you looking for when describing the activities in question One. John Mark. I would think that we're not looking for a specific character limit, just to be concise, right?

I see.

Yep, that's exactly right. So, so Caitlin, thanks for the question. It is limited I think to 3000 characters, which is quite a lot. I mean that that's an essay. We don't need an essay per SE. If you want to write an essay or feel free to write an essay, we'll read it, I promise you that. But what we're looking for is the quality. We're we're trying to get an idea. We can't possibly meet every Gea applicant. So your best way to do that is to introduce yourself on paper, just be be real about what you're putting in there and just tell us what's going on. That's what we're looking for.

Who you are.

A few more questions here John Mark Anya asks is there an automatic bursary for in province and I assume meaning Nova Scotia in profit students.

There is. So for Nova Scotia students, this is, this is a little bit separate, but I'll I'll answer the question because it's a good one. There is an automatic bursary that's put on your student account. It's not through our office. It's just done basically once we can determine that you are a Nova Scotia student, this is done through your application process. There's certain things that happen once you register for classes. The Nova Scotia Bursary is automatically assessed on your account. So you'll see.

It subtract from your tuition costs, but yes, that's done all in the background. Student accounts puts that on automatically based on registration and a few other things. But yes, there's nothing you need to do other than be from Nova Scotia and the rest is automated.

Ella asks.

Do you provide lower entrance awards if and I assume they're talking about renewable awards if you don't meet the needed GPA after first year? Or do you lose the scholarship completely?

Good question. Thanks for that, Ella. So there's, there's a couple different things there I'll try to be.

That's great.

Clear about what we're talking about. If you get a renewable scholarship, it's yours for four years. So if you as often students, you know, have a tough first year, I mean, it happens, it's OK. You might lose your scholarship for second year, but you have a chance to get it back in 3rd year. If you have two tough years, no problem, you still have a chance to get it back in your 4th year. So this is your scholarship for a four year entitlement. If you keep it all four years, that's amazing. If you lose it in one year, don't panic about that, you can get it back in the following year. So that's one thing if you do not have a renewable scholarship in first year or sorry, in your second year.

We would look at your first year's marks. So we have a separate scholarship program for people that maybe didn't apply to the Gea, didn't get a renewable scholarship, it's called the in course scholarship program. So it's for current Dalhousie students. The requirements for that would be the same as a renewable. So we're going to be looking for AGPA of 3.7 and 30 credit hours over 2 terms. So we're essentially looking for five classes, fall and winter and a 3.7 GPA and if you meet that criteria then you're automatically entered into that. There's no application, we just we get that information.

Thanks, Joe. Mark, I'm going to just because it's pertains to their specific situation, Michael, I'm going to encourage you to send me an e-mail via lucas.mancini@dow.ca or go to dell.ca/connect to talk with an admissions officer about your question relating to NSCC.

Anya comes in again with a question. If you change your major, does your award stay? I assume this depends on the award, is that correct, Omar?

Yeah, it does. And I see another question from Anya as well in the same light.

Is your scholarship for the same amount? What would the minimum requirements be? So they're all, there's many different scholarships. So as you can imagine between 1000 and $80,000 and the 2000 plus scholarships we have, they're not all the same. So some will have many of them will have the same requirements, which is 3.7 GPA and 30 credit hours and two terms. That's sort of the maximum that we would be looking for and they go all the way down.

18 credit hours over 2 terms and the 2.0 GPA, 2.0 GPA, so you need to be full time student. So that's nine credit hours in two terms. Eighteen 2.0 is good academic standing. Anything lower than that you'd be put on probation. So somewhere in between there all of the awards fit into that group. So depending on what you're matched with all that information will be a in the award letter when we send it to you or very specific about.

What you're getting and what's required for you to keep it if it's renewable.

And also in your dial online account, once you become a student, the award information is posted there as well.

Josie asks. Given an applicant is considered for 2000 plus awards once they submit the General entrance award, how would one know if they inadvertently submitted applications for an award twice? I'll answer that by saying.

You are. There's no way to apply for the awards that are included in the General Entrance award without filling in out the General Entrance award. So Dalhousie doesn't allow you to apply for these scholarships individually. The only way to apply for these different awards is by submitting that general Entrance award application. You fill out the one application, and then the application is measured up against these thousands of different awards. There's no way to conceivably apply to them twice.

Yeah. And there's also no way to submit multiple Gea applications. You're you're only able to submit one based on the based on your file. So we will look at you for everything. I take your point because people look at look for these online all the time. There are a few standalone applications, we're talking two or three. So the Gea is the primary application where we will assess you against all the awards that we have available.

This person asks, are some of the awards based on academics only or are they all based on academics and extracurricular activities?