An Update on the Twitter Scholarship
October 17th, 2009When we initially announced the Twitter Scholarship we announced a rather large prize and promoted it quite aggressively by…
- making a custom logo for it
- promoting it across hundreds of pages on our widely read site
- mentioning it on our blog
- pinging some of our contacts in the industry and emailed a few bloggers about it
- promoting it on Twitter
- and we even went as far as buying Google AdWords ads to help get the word out
…but none of it worked 
I am not sure if it was bad timing, if the submission was too complex, or if students have become more jaded about scholarship offers due lots of fake scholarship offers advertised by affiliate marketers who are doing lead generation – who never actually send out scholarship money.
Each year we do award students with $10,000+ in scholarship program awards, and have done so for the past 4 years now. We were anticipating getting thousands to 10,000’s of entries for the Twitter Scholarship, but so far we have been underwhelmed by the quantity (and to a lesser degree, quality) of the submissions. We have therefore decided to adjust the Twitter scholarship awards to
- winner – $1,400
- first runner up – $140
- second runner up – $140
We will distribute the additional funds we had earmarked for this scholarship throughout the upcoming year by launching more new scholarships.
I dont think it is the best way to do it. I also applied for the scholarship because I have got an admission and would resume in January 2010. I suggest the information should be published in the newspapers and even advertised on TV. Please do reply me if you heed to my advice- even if it does not work. Thank you. Also, the number of people should not be a function of the prize money. So i believe the grant should not be reduced. Thank you
By Zekeri Immanuel on October 19th, 2009
I liked the way this scholarship is right now. Given, I don’t know what it was before today as today was the first time I saw it, but a scholarship update sent about via twitter, the application used in the scholarship, seems like a good idea. It shows which people are really interested in the scholarship. I do, however, agree with Zekeri that the number of people in a scholarship who actually applied should not influence the original amount the scholarship was said to be. I would suggest simply adjusting the scholarship amount in the next scholarship(s) that would be awarded.
By Elisa on October 20th, 2009
When are you going to announce the winners? I’m very excited to find out!
By Lindsey on November 3rd, 2009
We have already told the winners. We should make a public announcement before the week is out.
By Daniel on November 3rd, 2009