How to build an AI-scored scholarship application review workflow for university financial aid offices in Formaloo

By the end of this guide, you'll have a scholarship application workflow where applicants submit their essay, transcript, and financial documentation once, and Formaloo's AI does the first read before your committee ever opens the file. One AI Analysis field scores the essay against a fixed rubric, a second reads the uploaded financial documentation and flags the applicant's financial need as High, Medium, or Low, and both reads sit privately on the record for your reviewers. Your committee then ranks applicants, moves them through review, and applicants get an automatic, on-brand email the moment a decision is made, with a branded PDF summary behind the scenes for your records.

This is the form applicants use to submit their details, essay, transcript, and financial documentation. It also holds the admin-only fields your committee uses to track status, assignment, and ranking. The fastest way to build it is with Magic Create: paste a prompt and Formaloo generates the whole form in seconds.

1. Open Magic Create: From your Formaloo homepage, click Magic Create.

2. Describe the application form: Paste a prompt like this: "Build a scholarship application form for a university financial aid office with fields for full name, email, student ID, program or major, GPA, which scholarship they're applying for (dropdown), a yes/no question asking whether they're requesting need-based financial aid consideration, household income and number of dependents, a file upload for their official transcript, a long text field for their application essay, and an optional file upload for additional supporting documents. Add four admin-only fields: a status dropdown (Submitted, AI review complete, Committee review, Ranked, Awarded, Declined), an assignee field for the reviewer, a number field for the committee's ranking score, and an internal notes long text field."

3. Click Create: Formaloo builds your form, including field IDs, in seconds.

4. Verify your fields: Your form should look like this. Magic Create will have generated most of it. Verify each field and field ID matches exactly, since these IDs are used later in logic, email templates, and the PDF template.

5. Publish the form: Click Publish in the island bar at the top of the editor.

This is where the workflow gets its AI edge. The AI Analysis field is a private field type that runs a prompt on every submission and stores the result on the row, hidden from the applicant. You'll add two of them: one to score the essay against a fixed rubric, and one to read the uploaded financial documentation and flag financial need. Both run automatically the moment an application is submitted, so by the time a reviewer opens the file, both reads are already sitting there.

1. Add the essay-scoring field: In your form editor, click Add field and select AI Analysis. Title it "AI essay rubric score."

2. Write the rubric prompt: Open the prompt box and use the @ menu to write: "Score this applicant's essay against the following rubric, each worth up to 25 points: clarity of academic and career goals, depth of financial need explained in their own words, demonstrated impact or community involvement, and overall writing quality. Read the essay in @essay_response. Output a total score out of 100 and a short paragraph explaining the score."

3. Add the financial-need field: Click Add field again, select AI Analysis, and title it "AI financial need flag."

4. Write the financial-need prompt: In the prompt box, write: "Read the uploaded financial documentation in @financial_documents, along with @household_income and @dependents_count. Classify the applicant's financial need as High, Medium, or Low, and explain your reasoning in two to three sentences, referencing specific figures from the uploaded document where possible."

5. Leave "Allow AI to update records" off on both fields: For a decision as high-stakes as a scholarship award, keep the AI's output as a read for your committee to weigh, not something that writes to status or ranking fields on its own. Your reviewers stay the ones who move an application forward.

6. Publish the form: Click Publish in the island bar to make both fields live.

Two things need to happen automatically here. The need-based aid fields should only appear if an applicant actually requests need-based consideration, and the committee shouldn't be able to rank or decide an application before it's actually been scored. Magic Logic handles both in one pass.

1. Open Advanced logic: In the form settings panel on the right side, click Advanced logic, then go to the Logic tab.

2. Open Magic Logic: Click Magic Logic in the top right corner of the Logic panel.

3. Describe your rules: Paste this prompt: "If 'Are you requesting need-based financial aid consideration?' is Yes, show 'What's your household's annual income?', 'How many dependents are in your household?', and 'Upload your financial documentation'. Hide all three by default. If 'Are you requesting need-based financial aid consideration?' is Yes, require 'Upload your financial documentation'. If 'Application status' is changed to 'Ranked', 'Awarded', or 'Declined', require 'Committee ranking score' to be filled in first."

4. Generate and review: Click Generate rules. The AI previews each rule, approve them, redo any that aren't quite right, and make manual adjustments if needed.

5. Save your logic: Click Save in the top right corner.

This workflow runs on four emails: a confirmation to the applicant, an internal alert to your review team, and two decision emails, one for awarded applicants and one for applicants who weren't selected. Build all four as custom templates so each one pulls in the right data automatically.

1. Open custom email templates: Click your profile icon, go to Apps and integrations, and open Custom email templates.

2. Create the applicant confirmation template: Click Add new template, name it "Application received," and set the subject to We've received your application, @full_name. Clear the body, add an AI block, and paste: "Write a warm, professional confirmation email from a university financial aid office. Confirm that @full_name's application for @scholarship_type has been received and is now moving through AI-assisted review ahead of committee review. Keep the tone reassuring and calm, not bureaucratic. Mention they'll hear back once a decision is made. Under 120 words. HTML design: white background, single centered column max-width 560px, Inter or system-ui font, a soft status badge reading 'Under review,' muted footer in #999." Save the template.

3. Create the internal notification template: Click Add new template, name it "New application submitted," and set the subject to New application submitted: @full_name for @scholarship_type. Add an AI block and paste: "Write an internal notification email for a financial aid office review team. A new scholarship application has arrived and its AI essay score and AI financial-need read are already attached to the record. Use a factual, dashboard-style tone. Include applicant name, program or major, GPA, scholarship type, and whether need-based aid was requested. Add a clear 'Review application' CTA button. Under 100 words. HTML design: white background, centered column max-width 560px, Inter or system-ui font, a structured data card for the key fields, muted footer in #999." Save the template.

4. Create the awarded-decision template: Click Add new template, name it "Application decision: Awarded," and set the subject to Congratulations, @full_name! Your @scholarship_type application was approved. Add an AI block and paste: "Write a warm, celebratory but professional email informing the applicant they've been awarded @scholarship_type. Reference their name and the scholarship name. Explain that the financial aid office will follow up with next steps and award details. Mobile-friendly, encouraging tone. Under 150 words. HTML design: white background, centered column max-width 560px, Inter or system-ui font, a status badge reading 'Awarded' in a warm accent color, muted footer in #999." Save the template.

5. Create the not-selected template: Click Add new template, name it "Application decision: Not selected," and set the subject to An update on your @scholarship_type application, @full_name. Add an AI block and paste: "Write a warm, empathetic email letting the applicant know their application was not selected this cycle. Never cold or dismissive. Reference their name and the scholarship name. Include an encouraging note that they're welcome to apply in future cycles. Under 130 words. HTML design: white background, centered column max-width 560px, Inter or system-ui font, soft muted palette, a status badge reading 'Not selected,' muted footer in #999." Save the template.

With your four templates built, connect each one to the moment it should fire. The confirmation and internal alert send on submission. The two decision emails depend on a status change, so they run through conditional logic instead.

1. Set up submission notifications: On the application form, open Notify from the right sidebar. Toggle on Send email to respondent, select your "Application received" template, and toggle on Receive email notification, selecting your "New application submitted" template to route to your review team.

2. Save your notification settings: Click Publish to make the notifications live.

3. Set up the decision email triggers: Open Advanced logic on the application form, go to On update, and click Add rule.

4. Save your rules: Click Save.

Once a decision is made, your committee needs one clean record per applicant: their details, the AI essay score, the AI financial-need read, and the committee's own decision, ready for internal files or board review. Build this as a custom PDF template so it generates automatically from the application record.

1. Open custom PDF templates: Click your profile icon, go to Apps and integrations, and open Custom PDF templates.

2. Add a new template: Click Add new template and switch the editor to HTML view.

3. Paste the template code:

4. Name and save: Name it "Scholarship application review summary" and click Save.

Applicants need somewhere to submit and check their status, and your committee and administration team need internal-facing pages scoped to their role. Activating a portal and layering role-based access is what makes this self-service on both sides.

1. Activate the portal: From your project, click the Settings (gear) icon, select Activate portal, then click Manage users to open the setup wizard.

2. Connect your user directory: Search for an existing user directory or create a new one, then click Next step.

3. Add the applicant role: Go to your User directory, click Edit profile fields, and add "Applicant" as an option on the User roles field. Committee and administration staff don't need a role here, since they're internal workspace members, not portal sign-ups.

4. Restrict applicants to their own application: On the "My application status" page's data block, switch to Edit mode, click Options, scroll to Manage access, select the applicant's profile field, and turn on Allow users to view only their data.

5. Set page access for committee and administration pages: Committee members and administrators are internal workspace members, not external portal users, so route their access through workspace teams rather than the portal role you set up for applicants. For every committee or administration page, click the three-dot menu next to the page name, select Access, choose Internal users, and pick the relevant team (for example, a "Scholarship committee" team or a "Financial aid administration" team).

6. Build the page structure:

7. Publish and share your portal: Once your pages and access levels are set, share the portal link with your applicants, committee, and administration team.

Note: You can set a custom domain on your portal, available on the Business plan or via the Brand removal add-on.

Beyond individual applications, your financial aid office likely wants a cycle-level view: how many applications came in by scholarship type, and how the committee's scores trended. Formaloo's AI Analyze block builds that as a chart with a written narrative, without your team assembling it by hand.

1. Add a Reports page: In your administration group, add a new page titled "Award trends."

2. Insert an AI Analyze block: On the page, add an AI Analyze block and point it at your scholarship application form.

3. Describe the report: Ask it to break down application volume and average committee ranking score by scholarship type, and to include a short written narrative alongside the chart.

You now have a scholarship review workflow where every application arrives with an AI-generated first read already attached: an essay score against your rubric, and a financial-need flag pulled straight from the applicant's uploaded documentation. Your committee ranks and decides on top of that context instead of starting from a blank file, and applicants get an automatic, warm email the moment a decision is made. Every reviewed application can be exported as a clean PDF for your records, and a cycle-level trends report gives your office a bird's-eye view without anyone building a spreadsheet by hand.

Don't build this from scratch — we've already put it together for you.