"Chosen Name" or "Preferred Name" field for scholarship applicants?

JoAnnaDarda

Hello!

My organization is considering adding a "chosen name" or "preferred name" field to our scholarship applications after we discovered the need for such a field during our recent scholarship cycle. Do other organizations use a field like this in their applications? If so, could you please share the language that you use?

In our current scholarship processes, we have a "signature field" at the very end of the application that asks students to sign their full legal name. Because this is the only field in the application where the applicant provides their name, SLM uses this field as the "project name" field.

In our most recent scholarship cycle, we encountered a student whose full legal name did not align with their preferred name used throughout the application or the gender identity that they provided. We wanted to make sure that the request reflected this student's preferred name, and wanted evaluators to see the preferred name as their first impression of the applicant.

We would like to add a "preferred name" at the top of our scholarship applications moving forward, so that they project/application name will always match the students' preference.