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Do grants and scholarships count as awards?

Key answer

Most often grants do not pass as an achievement award: they fund future work rather than recognize excellence. In community experience they go in as supporting evidence for the contribution criterion or the case. Your name must appear in the grant documents, even for a collective grant.

Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

  • Our grants were not in the awards category—attorneys said they do not qualify as awards. We indicated them as additional evidence and a supplement to the contribution: funding was attracted on a competitive basis for research.

  • The main thing is that your name appears in the grant documents. Attach evidence of participation—any documents related to the grant where you are mentioned. The grant can very well be collective.

  • If the level is neither national nor international, but the grant is significant and relevant to your topic, include it in your overall narrative rather than in the criteria. And yes, everything written must be proven with documents.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

Why "Awards" gets refused

Accepted in 14% of challenged petitions (25 of 184); not an approval rate.

The award itself is not shown to enjoy national or international recognition. Officers assess the prize itself, not merely the fact that you won it.

All refusal grounds and the sample

Sources

All questions on: AwardsAll questions on: Original contribution

Related on this site

Similar questions

A reference page built from community experience, not legal advice. Requirements and practice change - verify on uscis.gov.

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