About Sparrows
Sparrows Fellowship
A free ambassador program that places one student at each school as its Sparrows lead. Interviews are given only by nomination from school leadership.
What Sparrows is
Sparrows is a non-profit, student-led initiative created to develop leadership in aspiring high school students. It is also a school platform: schools use it for bell schedules, club pages and attendance, event calendars, and announcements — all in one place. Each school has its own site, kept up to date by its own administrators, staff, and club leaders.
It also carries an opportunities catalog for students: more than 2,000 internships, research programs, competitions, and local roles, filtered by interest, location, and deadline. Students can track their applications and have them reviewed in the same place.
Sparrows is free. There is no cost to a school, a district, or a student, and no paid tier. Most schools are set up and running within a week.
What the Fellowship is
The Sparrows Fellowship is our ambassador program. One student per school serves as that school's fellow and becomes its point of contact for Sparrows. The fellow provides what is needed to set the school up and helps introduce the platform to students and staff.
The Fellowship is entered by nomination. A student put forward by school leadership is interviewed, and a successful interview admits them directly — there is no application to complete and no list to wait on. Interviews are given by nomination only, which is what keeps the program selective and leaves the judgment with the staff who know their students.
Admission is what opens the opportunities catalog. When a school's fellow is admitted, full access opens for everyone at that school — not for the fellow alone. The Fellowship is led by students who went on to Harvard, UMD, Johns Hopkins, and Brown.
Representing the school
The fellow becomes the official Sparrows lead for their school and runs its setup from beginning to end.
Recognition
Past fellows have won the Coca-Cola Scholarship and gone on to Brown, UPenn, JHU, and Georgia Tech.
The role
The fellow sends us their school's bell schedules. Our team handles the rest and walks them through the platform.
The network
Fellows work alongside their counterparts at other schools and take on genuine leadership responsibility.
Nominating a student
A nomination is only a name and a way to reach the student. It commits neither the school nor the student to anything: we contact them, explain the program, and arrange an interview only if they are interested. There is no limit on how many students a school may nominate.
Nominations can be sent through the form linked in our email, or by replying to it directly. If you have not received an email from us, write to connect@usesparrows.com and we will follow up.
What the school is asked for
The Fellowship is designed to ask very little of a school. In practice it requires three things:
- A nomination from school leadership.
- A copy of the school's bell schedule.
- The school set up on Sparrows, which our team can do from the schedule and publicly available information.
There is no cost, no contract to sign, and no purchasing process. Sparrows does not integrate with a student information system, does not import student records, and does not ask staff to administer the platform beyond the initial setup.
Student privacy is taken seriously. If anything on Sparrows ever appears as though it could expose a student's private information, tell us and we will correct it.
How the process works
- 1
A member of school leadership nominates a student. Nominations come to us by name and contact information — nothing else is required at this stage.
- 2
We reach out to the nominated student and arrange a short interview.
- 3
If the interview goes well, the student is admitted as their school's fellow.
- 4
We set the school up on Sparrows using its bell schedule, and walk the fellow through the platform.
- 5
On admission, the full opportunities catalog opens for everyone at that school.
- 6
One fellow serves per school, and the program runs on an academic-year cycle.
Students who are not nominated can still put their own school forward through the ordinary route on our site. That is a separate process from the Fellowship: it places a student on a list rather than in an interview, and it is not how fellows are selected.
Common questions
The questions we are asked most often about Sparrows and the Fellowship.
Questions
If something here is left unanswered, write to connect@usesparrows.com and a member of the team will reply directly.