Portfolio Scholarships
About This Scholarship
The Portfolio Awards, made possible by generous donors, offer $12,500 scholarships to Gold Medal Portfolio winners and $2,000 scholarships to Silver Medal Portfolio winners.
How do I apply?
All graduating seniors submitting a collection of six works with accompanying Artist or Writer Statements and Personal Statements (500 words or less) are eligible. When applying, select “Art Portfolio” or “Writing Portfolio” as your category. You will be prompted to include an Artist or Writer Statement and a Personal Statement about your work.
What should I write about in my artist or writer statement and my personal statement?
Artist/Writer Statement: Write about your creative process: How did you select the works in your portfolio? Why do these works in particular belong together?
Consider questions like:
- What do you want viewers to understand about your collection of works?
- What are the key ideas, issues, struggles, or goals within the portfolio?
- Did you make deliberate decisions about materials, processes, voice, literary devices, etc.?
Your artist statement should be at least 100 words and must not exceed 500 words. The statement will be visible to jurors. Do not use self-identifying information in the statement.
Personal Statement: Write about you! Tell a story from your life, describing an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.
Consider questions like:
- What is a significant accomplishment or joyful experience that has shaped your life?
- What is a significant challenge, setback, or failure that you experienced? How did you respond to it? How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
- Tell us about how you developed a firmly held belief and how it has changed over time.
- Have you ever had a long-cherished or accepted belief challenged? How did you respond? How did the challenge affect your beliefs?
Your personal statement should be at least 100 words and must not exceed 500 words. This statement will be viewed by the scholarship committee if your work receives a Gold Key and goes on to be considered for a national portfolio scholarship award.
Visit our blog for additional tips on crafting your statements.
Who funds the Scholastic Awards’ Portfolio Scholarships?
Every year, the Alliance partners with distinguished individuals and institutions to provide scholarships to students. The Alliance thanks BLICK Art Materials, Command Companies and the Merson Family, Derek Fordjour, GV Group (Grafica Veneta, Lake Book Manufacturing, PA Hutchison), the Jay Pritzker Foundation, Jill and Peter Kraus, Lindenmeyr Book Publishing Papers, Maurice R. Robinson Fund, The New York Times, and Dav and Sayuri Pilkey, Quad and the Windhover Foundation, and the Roome Fund, for helping underwrite the portfolio scholarships.