Nomination Rules and Policies

General Deadlines and Reminders

Please read all of this information very carefully! We realize it is long, but a thorough reading now will help ensure that your nominee can submit a strong and complete application.

Important dates to keep in mind:

  1. Wednesday, December 12th, 2012: If you decide the online process is not right for your school/nominee, please request a hard copy application as soon as possible. We are ordering a limited number of hard copies, available on a first come/first served basis only. Hard copies will not be mailed past December 7th, 2012.
  2. Tuesday, January 8th, 2013: The deadline to nominate a student online is January 8th, 2013. We encourage you to nominate your student as soon as possible to give him/her the time necessary to complete the application. Ideally, all nominations will be submitted on or before December 21st, 2012 (the start of winter break).
  3. Friday, January 11th, 2013: The deadline for students to complete their online application is 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday, January 11th, 2013.
  4. Friday, January 11th, 2013 - Friday, January 18th, 2013: After a student completes his/her application, an email will be sent to the school principal asking him/her to review the application and verify that the materials are correct and the student truly is the school’s nominee. Principals will have until January 18th, 2013 to respond to this email. After this deadline, applications still missing the principal verification will be considered incomplete and will be disqualified. This is a required step!

Previous Scholar Principal Verification:

Please note that one or more previous Carson Scholar winners might attend your school. All previous scholars are invited to apply to our Scholar Recognition Program. While this is completely separate from the school nomination process, it will still require a principal verification.

School Eligibility:

The Carson Scholars Fund scholarship program is open to all accredited K-12 schools in the United States. At this time, we cannot accept applications from students who are enrolled solely in virtual schools or who are homeschooled.

  


Nomination Rules

All schools in the United States are invited to nominate a student for the Carson Scholars Fund scholarship program. Unless you have been notified otherwise by a Carson Scholars Fund staff member, your school can only nominate one student.

Schools use a variety of methods to choose their nominee. You might form a committee of educators/counselors to select a qualified candidate, or you might hold an informal essay contest among possible candidates to help narrow the selection field. For more information about how schools nominate students, click here. Please make sure that participants and their parents/guardians understand that they are not Carson Scholar Award recipients during any school-sponsored applicant selection process prior to submission of the full application. Submission of an application is not a guarantee of an award.

When choosing your nominee, please be aware of the following rules and policies:

  • Only students in grades 4-11 in the United States are eligible.
  • Only school officials (teachers, counselors, administrators) can submit a nomination.
  • Unless your school has been informed otherwise by a staff member of the Carson Scholars Fund, your school can only nominate one student.
  • All nominees must have a grade point average (GPA) of 3.75 or above on a 4.0 scale in the combined academic subjects. For complete details, click here.
  • All nominees must demonstrate humanitarian qualities in their schools and communities through volunteer work and/or community service above and beyond what is required.
  • A student can only be nominated if she/he has not previously been awarded a Carson Scholars Fund Award. Previous scholars are eligible to apply for our Carson Scholar Recognition Program. They will receive information about this application via email.
  • If any of these nomination rules are not followed, we reserve the right to disqualify all nominees/applicants from your school.


Rules for Receiving a Scholarship Payout

Carson Scholars receive a scholarship award of $1,000. Scholarship awards are held in trust until students attend college. Scholarship awards will earn interest every year until the student graduates from high school. (Interest rates will vary from year to year depending on economic conditions. Students receive a statement every summer updating them on their current balance.) In order to receive their scholarship payouts, scholarship recipients must be aware of the following rules:

  • While a social security number is not required to apply for a Carson Scholars Fund Award, one will be required when a scholar is ready to attend college and receive his/her scholarship payout. We cannot payout scholarship funds for a student without a social security number.
  • Scholarship awards can only be paid out when a student has enrolled full-time at an accredited college or university in the United States in a four-year (bachelor’s-degree-track) program.
  • Students can defer receiving their scholarship award for up to three years after graduating from high school. (For example, if a student attends community college first, the scholarship award can be deferred until he/she enrolls in a four-year program.)

If you have further questions, please call 410.828.1005 or email rebekah@carsonscholars.org.