To apply for the Catalyst Scholarship, you will need to prepare the following materials. We do not require standardized test scores; we care about your vision and your execution.

1. Applicant Information

Basic personal details, current high school, and contact information.

2. Transcript / Activities

Upload a one-page document highlighting your extracurricular activities, projects, and any work experience. This gives us a sense of your passions and interests outside of the classroom.

3. Short Answer Essays (Max 2500 characters each)

You will be asked to respond to the following three prompts:

• Innovation: Free Ventures is looking for students who can pinpoint key problems in society and can tackle them from a bottoms-up perspective as opposed to a top-down social hierarchy perspective. If you could develop, invent, or innovate anything to change the world for the better, what would it be and why?
• Impact: What field of study are you most interested in & how have you explored it? Why? How is that most helpful to your community?
• Passion: What are you passionate about? How have you spent time exploring this passion?

Finalists will be invited to a virtual interview. This is a theoretical and philosophical discussion based on your essays.

We will discuss your background, the world you came from, and how you hope to utilize this scholarship to impact your community.

Be prepared to answer and defend the following prompt in real-time:

If you could develop, invent, or innovate anything to change the world for the better, what would it be and why?

You will sharpen wits with your interviewer regarding your answer, debating why this innovation is necessary for society and articulating exactly what it would look like 50 years from now.

• September 1st, 2025: Applications Open
• January 2nd, 2026: Application Deadline (11:59 PM PST)
• Early & Mid-January: Finalist interviews
• Late-January: Catalyst Scholars Announced