LoginsNominations move through six steps, all managed from your CR dashboard. Full portal instructions with screenshots are in the Campus Representative Instruction Manual.
What a complete nomination includes
Six items make up a complete nomination. The student supplies most of them; you upload them and submit the nomination. A nomination that is incomplete at the deadline is not reviewed.
- Student questionnaire — completed by the student in the portal.
- Research essay — written and uploaded by the student.
- Three letters of recommendation — the student secures the writers; letter writers upload letters to the portal; the letters are uploaded to the Foundation when you nominate the student.
- Transcripts — the student is responsible for uploading the transcript to the portal, including transcripts from any previous institution; transcripts will be uploaded to the Foundation when you nominate the student.
- Campus Representative statement — the form you complete, covering eligibility and academic standing, with an optional narrative. Optional, but strongly encouraged.
- Permanent Resident Card — a copy, where the nominee is a permanent resident rather than a citizen.
Before you submit
None of the following is required, but each one strengthens a nomination, and each is easier to fix before the deadline and impossible after.
- Check that each transcript is current and readable, and that it covers every institution the student has attended — many transcripts report only total credits earned from previous schools.
- Confirm the letters follow the format requirements.
- Check that letter writers have compared the student to others from your or other institutions who went on to research careers and advanced degrees.
- Where a student lists a publication, confirm the research mentor has verified its status — published, accepted, or submitted.
- Check that the student and the research mentor have both described the student’s own intellectual contribution to the research.
- Encourage nominees to answer the optional question about social or economic circumstances that affected their education (when applicable).
Nominations must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. Central Time on the last Friday in January.
A note on the online system. The nomination system is being rebuilt for the next competition. What the Foundation requires of a nomination is settled, and it is described below; the screen-by-screen mechanics will be confirmed before the competition opens, and this page will be updated then.
The six steps
1
Set up a preliminary meeting with students interested in the Goldwater Scholarship
When a student submits a Student Interest Form and Student Profile, you receive an email and the student appears on your CR Dashboard. The Student Interest Form is intended to start a conversation with you; the Foundation does not use this information in its selection decisions. Use the messaging function on your dashboard to schedule a meeting with the student. After you and the student decide whether a Goldwater application is the right next step, approve the Student Interest Form to admit the student to the competition, or decline it to end the student’s candidacy.
2
Schedule a meeting with the student to discuss letter writers
Selecting letter writers is a critical part of the Goldwater nomination process. Many students have little experience choosing recommenders, so they benefit from early guidance on whom to ask. Strong letter writers can significantly affect a student’s competitiveness; they should be able to speak in detail about the student’s research ability, promise, and commitment to a research career.
Once you and the student decide to move forward with the Goldwater application, schedule a meeting to discuss appropriate letter writers. After you and the student agree on whom to ask, the student is responsible for contacting those individuals to confirm that they are willing to submit letters on the student’s behalf. This discussion should happen very early in the application cycle.
3
Letters of Recommendation
Three letters are required. Each Letter Writer submits their own letter — typed into a narrative box that holds about two pages or uploaded as a signed PDF — so your part is to approve the writers with the student, pass on the Foundation’s guidance and your campus deadline, and check that all three have arrived. Allow four to five weeks.
4
Transcripts
The student uploads a transcript from every institution whose grades count toward the cumulative GPA. Official or unofficial transcripts are both accepted. Check that the record is current — that it carries the autumn term’s courses and grades — before you submit.
5
Your Campus Representative Statement
Optional but strongly recommended and limited to 2,000 characters. Use it to describe how your campus selected this student, to explain a weakness the reviewers will notice anyway, to compare the student with others from your institution who have gone on to research careers, or to address something raised in the letters.
6
Submit the nomination
Submit every nominee together, by the last Friday in January at 5:00 p.m. Central Time. Check first that the questionnaire, the research essay, the three letters and the transcripts are all in place: a nomination is judged as it arrives, and the Foundation cannot accept additions after the deadline.
Deadlines and exceptions
All nomination materials must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. Central Time on the last Friday in January. Incomplete or late nominations are not reviewed. Two narrow exceptions exist: in a natural or man-made disaster, the Foundation President may grant an extension of up to five business days (request it in advance where feasible); and if the application portal itself closes — for weather, power failure, or similar — the deadline extends to the business day after the closure ends.
You are the nomination gatekeeper
Before submitting a nomination, review the student’s materials, including transcripts, to confirm they meet Goldwater requirements. Also review each letter of recommendation before uploading it. In addition to checking format requirements, watch for substantive problems, such as letters addressed to a different award or letters that do not discuss the student’s research and research promise. Addressing these issues before submission helps ensure the nomination is complete, compliant, and ready for review.