Friday, June 16th, 2017 the Hatua staff had the privilege of inviting 14 new students into our university scholarship program. It was a long and intense application process and we would to thank everyone who participated. Your patience, engagement and passion for pursuing your education is truly admirable and we are honored to be able to help you along your journey.
The university scholarship vetting process is very similar to how we handle our secondary school scholarship applications. Every scholarship we issue is merit and need based. We use a points system, awarding marks for returning a fully completed application form, the quality of the essays submitted, strength of the teacher’s recommendation letter, as well as each student’s average end of term marks. Each essay is marked by two different team members from Hatua, following standardized marking criteria meriting the essays’ organization, the depth of its development, clarity of the applicant’s idea, spelling and grammar. An overall score is then aggregated for each applicant. These points are recorded against each application’s reference number, and not their name, in order to prevent bias.
From these scores we select the top 80 candidates for secondary home visits and around 27 for university home visits. During these visits Hatua’s team, in teams of two together with Hatua gap year students, meet student’s guardians to assess the financial means of each family. We code each family’s need level as either high, meaning without a scholarship the student will definitely not continue their education, medium, or low need. At this point during the secondary school selection process we would select and invited the top 20 female and 20 male candidates according to their application score from among those students determined to be of high financial need. However, for the university application process we take it one step further. After the home visits have been conducted and review we invited 23 students for personal interviews. Since we will not have as much time mentoring our new university students on Hatua’s Key Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Teamwork & Resourcefulness (4-5years as opposed to 8-9 years), we added the interview to help us identify which students already portray values that aligned with that of Hatua’s. In pairs of 2 Hatua’s staff members interviewed the 23 candidates in person of over the phone if needed, asking them a series of opened ended questions to help us gain insight into their personalities, interests, passions and future goals. Interviews were awarded points based on a grading rubric. These points are then added to the overall application score for the applicant. Of the 23 interviews, we selected 7 females and 7 males to join the Hatua Scholarship Program.
This fabulous group of 14 students will join our Gap Year Programming activities immediately. This will help prepare them for life away from home at university. Additionally, we welcome them into the tight knit support system of our Hatua Family at large. We would like to extend out most sincere congratulations to our newest beneficiaries and wish them the best of luck as the embark on this new and exciting next chapter of their lives.