Walkthrough of STARS Sections and Tips for Each - Ohlone College Foundation Scholarships

1. Personal Information

This is the basic information about yourself—name, address, email, etc. Make sure you know your student ID number!

2. Opening Questionnaire

Here you will be asked a series of questions, many relating to your areas of study and Financial Aid status (don’t worry if you don’t have Financial Aid, there are plenty of scholarships available regardless of financial need!). This Opening Questionnaire helps match you up to the scholarships you likely qualify for.

3. Academic Information

You will be asked your expected degree—an Associate’s Degree, Certificate, undeclared, or if you are transferring to another institution for a Bachelor's or other degree.

There are drop-down menus for your major and the college you’ll be attending. If you don’t see one that pertains to you, select “Other”.

4. Free Form Essay Questions

In this section, you will be asked to write to short essays about yourself. They will be attached to each scholarship that you apply to. If you want to skip this section for now so you can see what scholarships you qualify for, you can type a placeholder, click “Save and Continue”, and come back later.

First, type your essays in a word processor program (such as Microsoft Word), and then copy and paste it into STARS—STARS will log you out after a few minutes of activity, so if you work on your essays within STARS you may lose your progress!

If an essay asks for a 150-300 words, do a word count and stick to it! You will be disqualified if you do not follow instructions.

5. Attach Documents

You are required to submit a copy of your unofficial transcript. Click on “Upload,” put in a description, and select the file you want to upload.

How do I obtain electronic versions of documents to upload?

The simplest way to obtain an electronic file of a document to upload into STARS is to scan a paper copy as a PDF file or an image (JPG) file. Transcripts can be printed from WebAdvisor and then scanned. Each letter of recommendation can also be scanned.

There are scanners for student use in the Library and Hyman Hall on the Fremont campus and Learning Resources Center on the Newark campus.

Alternatively, you can install the free Adobe Reader, and then print your transcript from WebAdvisor to Adobe PDF to create a PDF file for uploading.

Do not obtain paper copies from Admissions & Records! This will be more work for you, may cost a fee, and may not get to you before the scholarship deadline.

Don’t wait until the last minute to obtain these documents! There will be no extensions for getting in letters of recommendation or transcripts!

6. Recommended Scholarships

You’re almost there! Here you will see the scholarships you most likely qualify for. However, even if a scholarship is shown as a match, you must read all scholarship requirements carefully and make sure you fully qualify before applying. Any inaccuracies in your applications will result in disqualification from all scholarships. For example, if you apply for a scholarship requiring you to have completed 24 units but you have completed less than required, all of your applications will subsequently be disqualified.

Click on “Apply Now” to open a scholarship. Once you’ve read all the requirements and made sure you’ve met them, check each requirement to confirm that you meet them.

Some scholarships will require a letter of recommendation—you will see another area for upload of documents. Some scholarships also want more information on you and require an additional essay.

Once you have completed everything, click “Apply Now” to finalize your application. Make sure to click on “Apply for more Scholarships” afterwards to see what else you can apply for!