Why We Don’t Offer Individual Feedback On Applications

We get it – receiving a rejection email sucks.

You poured hours into your application and spent days waiting for the email. When the news isn't what you hoped for, it's natural to question what you could have done differently. After all, this is your dream project.

We wanted to offer you some comfort and explain why providing individual feedback usually wouldn’t be helpful.

Every year, we receive a couple of thousand applications for our 10 Fellowships and 20 Grants. Every application is reviewed by our team, with shortlisted candidates going through multiple rounds of internal reviews.

The truth is, many of the applications we receive are good. Some are really good. Selecting the top 30 from the large pool of candidates is as much art as science, and often there aren’t any specific reasons we can point to that made the difference. Many strong applications aren’t missing anything obvious; they are simply up against a handful of extraordinary projects that pushed them out of the running.

That’s not to say we don’t receive lazy applications. These include applications with

spelling errors,
incomplete answers
clearly AI generated answers,
unclear and vague answers,
wrong or inaccessible links to the pitch video.

If you’ve taken the time to seek out and read this article, this likely isn’t you. If you think it may be, you probably already know what you can do to improve next time.

For the hundreds of strong applications we have to decline, providing individual feedback often wouldn’t be helpful – there simply isn’t any specific low-hanging fruit we can point to that would make the difference.

We’ve had to reject many exceptional applications. If you believe that yours is one of them, we encourage you to keep doing what you’re doing, and we hope to see you when next year’s application window opens.

Team OSV

O'Shaughnessy Ventures. | http://osv.llc