Who Needs to See This? Rethinking What Applicants and Reviewers See

Every field on an application has an audience. Some fields matter to applicants, some matter to reviewers, and some matter only to the administrators who manage the process and report on it afterward. When every field is visible to everyone, applicants wade through questions that don't apply to them and reviewers spend time on information that has no bearing on their evaluation.

Deciding what to hide, and from whom, is one of the simplest ways to improve the experience for both groups. It also protects the integrity of your review. Before you publish your next call for applications, it is worth asking a single question about each field: who actually needs to see this?

Help reviewers focus on what matters

Reviewers are often faculty and staff volunteering their time on top of full workloads. The more an application shows them, the longer each review takes and the easier it is for attention to drift away from the criteria that matter. Narrowing the reviewer view to the information needed for evaluation is a user-first decision that pays off in faster, more consistent scoring.

Start by walking through the application as a reviewer would. For each field, ask whether it informs a scoring criterion. If it doesn't, it is a candidate to hide. Common examples include:

• Contact and logistical details such as email address, phone number, and mailing address

• Classification and reporting fields such as department codes, funding source, or program category

• Questions or files that don't apply to the evaluation, such as budget justifications that are reviewed separately or compliance attestations

Hiding a field from reviewers does not mean losing it. The data is still collected and available to administrators for tracking, communication, and reporting after the review is complete. You keep everything you need while reviewers see only what they need.

Consider a blind review

For many competitions, the strongest reason to hide information is fairness. A blind review removes the applicant's identity from the reviewer's view so that proposals are judged on their merit. It reduces the influence of reputation, familiarity, and unconscious bias, and it keeps reviewers from contacting applicants about their evaluation after the fact.

Even when a fully blind process isn't the right fit, some information is almost always worth keeping out of the reviewer view:

• Identifying details: name, institution or department, and other details that reveal who the applicant is.

• Data that can anchor judgment: GPA, advisor or mentor name, prior award history.

• Demographic information: age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and similar characteristics.

• Confidential administrative fields: internal notes, eligibility flags, or communications intended only for staff.

A blind review is only as strong as its weakest field. Uploaded files are a common gap. A CV, a letter of support, or a proposal with the applicant's name in the header can undo careful field-level settings. If identity matters to your process, give applicants clear instructions on how to prepare anonymized documents.

Don't forget the applicant view

Visibility decisions apply to applicants too. An application is often more than the questions an applicant answers. It can also hold data your office adds, imports, or uses behind the scenes, and applicants don't need to see or complete all of it.

Fields worth hiding from applicants include:

• Data imported from other systems, such as GPA or class standing pulled from a student information system. It isn't confidential, but asking applicants to view or re-enter it adds effort and invites errors.
• Internal tracking fields that support reporting but have no meaning to the applicant, such as cohort codes or funding categories
• Notes for reviewers, such as a comment field where administrators add context, flag eligibility questions, or summarize a prior review round
• Post-submission information, such as files or scores administrators add before assigning applications to reviewers

The result is a shorter, cleaner form for applicants and a more complete record for your office. Applicants focus on what only they can provide, and administrators capture everything needed for review and reporting in one place.

Questions to ask before your next call for applications

Before you open your next opportunity, take a few minutes to review each field with these questions in mind:

1. Does this field inform a scoring criterion? If not, reviewers likely don't need it.
2. Could this information influence a reviewer's judgment in ways unrelated to merit?
3. Do we already have this data from another source? If so, applicants shouldn't have to provide it again.
4. Is this field for internal tracking or reporting only?
5. Will reviewers need context from our office that applicants shouldn't see?
6. Do uploaded files reveal anything we have hidden elsewhere?

The answers will rarely be the same for every program. A student research award, a faculty seed grant, and an internal limited submission each have different goals, reviewers, and reporting needs. Revisiting visibility for each opportunity keeps every process as focused and fair as it can be.

InfoReady makes it easy

InfoReady gives administrators the flexibility to control visibility at the field level. You can hide fields from reviewers, set up a blind review that hides applicant identity, and create admin-only questions that applicants never see. All data remains available for reporting. Hiding fields from applicants is available with a Pro license; contact your account manager if you are unsure which license your institution has.

To learn how to hide fields in InfoReady, visit these support articles:

• Blind review process: hide applicant identity
• Hide fields from reviewers
• Hide fields from applicants (admin-only questions)