A home for Scholarships

Scholarships are a critical tool used by Universities to attract the best and brightest students.

Over almost 200 years, the University of Melbourne’s scholarship pool had grown past 1000 award types, all with different selection criteria, application dates and owners. The central Scholarships office controlled less than a third of available funding; many scholarships could not be awarded because they were legally outdated or because they were never advertised.

As a result, most high achieving prospective students believed that Melbourne was the least generous of all Australian Universities, and were not applying to Melbourne courses.

Over six intensive months, I engaged a research team and dedicated an outstanding team member as project manager. We conducted user needs testing to determine how, when and why students search for funding;onboarded critical stakeholders in person; ran internal workshops; cleared data irregularities; worked with Legal to make outdated scholarships awardable; and ultimately created a shared database that students could easily search.

This database was then matched to the University's key Course Search pages, and my team created a suite of print materials for events. This resulted two years later in high achiever research that rated the University as one of vAustralia’s most desirable destinations.