Two-tiered process for Second and Third Stage

The two-tiered process worked really well in the 2021 selections and is something we would like to continue with for the following reasons:

• To ensure that a balanced number of candidates from public and private school systems get selected for each subsequent round of the selections process.
• To ensure that a balanced number of candidates from privileged and underprivileged backgrounds get selected for each subsequent round of the selections process.
• To ensure a common/ uniform frame of selection criteria is used in the selection of candidates from the larger pool for specially designated seats such as offers for candidates from SOS Nepal or other special conditional offers from any UWC.
• To ensure that all candidates (irrespective of their schooling, socio-economic, or special/conditional placement offers) get selected using the same criteria, in the same setting, and in the company of each other.

How and when will it be applied?

Both the second and third stages involve group-based activities and personal interviews as ways to evaluate students and one of the main objectives of the selection process is to allow the members of the selection committee to spend as much time as possible with the potential UWC candidates so we can really evaluate them on the basis of the five core criteria set out by the UWC guidelines. In order to make this work, we are going to follow the steps below:

• Before the second stage of the process, the involved members of the selections committee will be divided into two groups. One group will be responsible for evaluating students from the full scholarship pool and the other group will be responsible for evaluating the students from the partial scholarship pool. The two groups will be evaluating their respective pools of candidates until the end of the selections process.
• For group-based activities in the second and third stage, the candidates will be divided into groups depending on the number of candidates. Each group will have a balanced mix of students from the full scholarship pool and the partial scholarship pool to avoid any obvious divide determined by socio-economic backgrounds or educational background (for example, private school and public school).
• The selecting members will also be divided accordingly so that each group has a balanced number of evaluators observing students eligible for full scholarships and those eligible for partial scholarships.
• During the interviews, the selectors responsible for full scholarship students will interview their pool of candidates and the same will apply to selectors responsible for partial scholarships.
•  the end of each stage, the results will be tallied to have a ranking of students in the full scholarship pool and a ranking of students in the partial scholarship pool to ensure that merit and need are being considered together throughout the process.