Applicants are encouraged to respond to the prompts by video. This video should take the form that best enables you to present your work. Examples from past submissions are selfies, recorded slide presentations, animations, and video documentaries. Videos don’t have to be perfectly polished. You are not being assessed on your ability to edit a video professionally, but we do encourage you to think about how you’re telling your story and getting your points across. Most of all, we encourage you to point the camera away from yourself and demonstrate what you’re working on.
You do not have to record your videos live. If you have limited access to a device or an unstable internet connection, you can record your video ahead of time and upload them at a later time.
Applicants who are not able to submit video responses due to device limitations or internet connectivity issues can provide written responses instead.
We encourage you to carefully consider your choice of submission format. While you are able to switch later by sending a request through our support team, doing so may mean that you lose your initial responses.
Applicants who apply by video find that they are better able to provide evidence of what they’ve accomplished. Similarly, peers and project reviewers have shared that they are better able to review the project and have a more enjoyable experience doing so. Applications with video responses are therefore more likely to advance. Please consider this when choosing a format.
We discourage you from submitting a written application unless you find it necessary to do so. Legitimate reasons for submitting a written application include:
- Limited access to the internet such that you would find it challenging to upload or stream video
- Limited or no access to a video recording device
If you don’t have a strong reason for not responding to the application questions with a video, review of your application may be negatively impacted.
Both video and text formats have length limitations, so think carefully about what you want to say. Videos must be a minimum of 30 seconds and a maximum of 5 minutes. Text responses must be a minimum of 250 characters and a maximum of 1600 characters. You can record or upload a video. We recommend watching your video after completing it to make sure that you captured it fully.