Application help and advice

Find guidance on how to apply for school-leaver scholarships, including troubleshooting issues with the application system, and who to ask to be your referee.

Accessing CommunityForce

You’ll apply online via CommunityForce, our application system. If you’re having problems accessing CommunityForce, try in another web browser, or email scholarships-office@vuw.ac.nz for help.

The system is slower when there are more applicants online, so it may pay to submit your application as early as possible.

All individual school leaver scholarships are applied for through a single application in CommunityForce. When you select the scholarship(s) you wish to be considered for in the “Scholarship Categories” section, the relevant sections will automatically appear for you to complete.

Eligibility for school-leaver scholarships

See the individual regulations for eligibility requirements, for instance: citizenship, residency etc.

Choosing referees

It’s important to choose referees who know you well and can comment on the qualities and characteristics required for the scholarship you’re applying for. The scholarship regulations will highlight what selectors are looking for.

A family member cannot act as a referee, except for the Financial Support section. The referee for the Financial Support section must be a parent or caregiver due to the sensitive nature of the questions asked about household income and assets.

It is your responsibility to ensure your referee has submitted the reference on time. Please check your application regularly and keep reminding your referee. Without your completed reference your application will be ineligible.

We’ll contact you by email after you’ve applied

All emails about your scholarship application status will come from admin@communityforce.com. It’s best to add this address to your contacts, so notifications don’t end up in your junk folder. It is also a good idea to advise your referee of this.

You can also check the status of your application in Pūaha, our student portal (for instance ‘under committee review’ means it is under consideration).

You can expect to receive an email with the outcome of your application at the start of October.

If you are applying for any school-leaver scholarship, please do not use your secondary school email address when creating a Community Force account. This means no email addresses ending in school.nz.

Accept your offer by the deadline

If your application is successful, we’ll email you a scholarship offer that’s conditional on gaining University Entrance.

Make sure you respond to the scholarship offer before Tuesday 15 October. If you don’t, your scholarship offer will expire and the scholarship may be reallocated.

Meeting the conditional requirements

You need to have gained University Entrance or been approved entry into one of the University pre-degree programmes to retain your scholarship. Please advise us if you are intending to study part-time or if you are waiting on additional credits to confirm University Entrance as we will review individual circumstances.

Scholarship payments

You can choose to have the payments put towards accommodation at one of our University halls of residence, in which case the total amount will be paid in two instalments in February and July.

If you choose for your scholarship to go towards tuition fees, then the total amount will be credited towards your student fees account when you receive your first invoice.

If you qualify for Fees Free, then your scholarship for that year will be paid out to contribute to your living costs. The payments will be made in two instalments, in Trimesters 1 and 2 after the withdrawal periods. Payment must be used for study-related costs such as accommodation, books for study, travel to and from university, or to support your living costs while you are studying.

When to apply if you're taking a gap year

If you’re considering taking a gap year before you start university study, it’s up to you when to apply for scholarships. You can apply while you’re on a gap year if you meet the other eligibility criteria and have not studied at degree level.

If you apply for a scholarship and are successful, and then you decide to take a gap year, you will need to reapply the following year, as there are no deferrals.

If you have taken a single gap year after completing Year 13, you can apply for our school-leaver scholarships, as long as you have not studied at another university during that time.