TD Community Leadership Scholarship Has Ended: What to Do Now
If you came here to apply for the TD Scholarships for Community Leadership, read the first section first: TD’s own page says the program has concluded and no new applications are accepted for 2026 and beyond. That is not the end of the story for a Grade 12 with a community-leadership file, because the essay TD used to ask for is the essay four other Canadian awards still ask for this cycle. This guide says what happened, what TD points to instead, where a community-leadership application goes now, and how to write and speak the story so it holds up in front of a panel.
What TD’s page says now
For more than thirty years the TD award was the entrance scholarship most closely tied to one idea: that a teenager who had changed something in their community was worth funding through a degree. The program page is still live, but it is a notice rather than an application.
If a guidance handout has TD on it, cross it off and ask what year the list was made. If you are a First Nations, Métis or Inuit student, the successor award is a real option, and everything below applies to it.
Where a community-leadership file goes in the 2027 entry year
The thing TD rewarded, a student who organized other people around a problem and can say what changed, is exactly what the awards still running read for. Each has a written component on that theme and its own guide with sourced dates:
- Loran Award. Direct application, closes in mid October of Grade 12, two rounds of interviews, with service at the centre of its stated criteria. The Loran and Schulich guide has the 2027-cycle dates.
- Queen’s Chancellor’s Scholarship. School nomination plus an application whose first long question is, verbatim, an example of your volunteerism in your school or community and its impact. The Chancellor’s guide walks through the published questions.
- Western National Scholarship Program. School nomination, an essay, a reference, and an interview for the shortlisted; “commitment to community service” is one of Western’s five stated criteria. See the Western guide.
- UBC Presidential Scholars Award. No separate essay: you tick a box and UBC reads your Personal Profile. The UBC entrance scholarships guide covers which awards need more.
- Beedie Luminaries for BC students facing financial adversity, with a panel interview; see the Luminaries guide.
One well-built community story, told at 2,500 characters for Queen’s, at essay length for Western, at 2,100 characters for UBC and out loud for a Loran volunteer, is the whole job. Build it once, properly.
What “community leadership” means to a reader
Students hear “leadership” and reach for a title. Scholarship readers look for three other things, and a file with the title but not the three reads as thin.
- A gap you noticed that other people had walked past. The reader wants the moment you saw that the food bank hours excluded the families who needed it, or that the grade 9s were not coming to tutoring because the room was next to the staff office. Noticing is the leadership; the title is the paperwork.
- Other people who did something because of you. A community award is not funding a solo project. Who did you ask, what did you ask them for, and who said no at first? A volunteer you recruited and kept is worth more on the page than fifty hours you logged alone.
- What is different now, in a form someone could check. A number, a schedule that still runs, a person who took over. The strongest closing fact in a community essay is that the thing outlived your involvement.
The fourth thing, which separates a funded file from a good one, is the link to what the money is for: the specific placement or program the funding unlocks, and why the problem you noticed at seventeen is the one you intend to keep working on.
Six practice prompts
None of the awards above publishes its interview questions, and TD’s former questions are no longer published. These are AcceptMe’s practice prompts, written to the theme every one of these panels reads for. Write the first two at 2,500 characters and say the rest out loud against a two-minute clock.
- Describe a need in your school or community that you noticed before anyone asked you to. What did you do about it, and what is different now?
- Tell us about the people you brought into a project. How did you convince the first one, and what did you do when someone let you down?
- What is a community effort you started that is still running without you? What did you have to give up to make that possible?
- Tell us about a time your plan for helping people was wrong about what they actually needed. How did you find out, and what did you change?
- If we fund four years of your degree, what will you be able to do for your community in that time that you could not do otherwise?
- Who disagreed with the way you were leading, and what did they see that you did not?
A worked answer
Prompt 1, written at Queen’s length, about 2,300 characters, from a student in a mid-sized Ontario town.
The need was a bench. Our library runs a homework club on Tuesdays and Thursdays for grade 7 and 8 students, and in the fall of Grade 11 I volunteered there as a math helper. By November I had noticed that the same four kids left at 4:10 every day, twenty minutes before the end, and that they were all from the same apartment building on Concession Street. I asked one of them why. The bus that stops outside the library at 4:15 is the last one that gets them home before their parents leave for evening shifts; the next one is 5:05.
I did two things. I asked the librarian, Ms. Okafor, whether the club could start half an hour earlier on the days the school lets out at 3:00. She said the room was free but she had no one to open it. I said I would, and I got two friends from my physics class to alternate with me so it did not depend on one person. Then I went to the building. I printed a one-page notice with the new time in English and Arabic, because that was the language on the mailboxes, and left it with the superintendent, who put it in the elevator.
The first week, the four kids stayed to the end. By February there were eleven students from that building, and the librarian moved the whole club to the earlier time permanently. What I got wrong was assuming, for two months, that the early leavers were bored. They had a bus to catch, and nobody running the club had ever taken it. The club now runs at 3:30 without me; a grade 10 student I trained opens the room. My motivation was not service in the abstract. I liked those kids and I was annoyed that a timetable was deciding whether they got help with fractions. At Queen’s I want to study urban planning, and the thing I will keep doing is asking who a schedule was built for, because the answer is usually not the people who need it most.
What makes it fundable: an observation with a time on it, a question asked of the person affected instead of a guess, two named adults, recruited helpers so the fix did not depend on the writer, a before-and-after number, an admitted misreading, a successor, and a last line that turns the story into a reason to fund a degree. It never uses the word leadership.
Saying it out loud
Loran, Western and Luminaries will ask you to tell this story to a panel whose job is to check that the file is yours. A memorized essay recited at the camera fails that check. Prepare the material, not the wording: the bus time, the librarian’s name, the February number, the thing you got wrong. The leadership questions guide explains why a panel hears “I was president of” as the start of an answer, not the answer. AcceptMe’s interview practice puts you on camera with a fresh, unseen question on that theme, a prep window and a hard answer clock you set, one take, and hands back a transcript with the coach’s notes on the sentence a panellist would have followed up.
Mistakes that cost community-leadership applicants
- Planning around TD. The program has concluded; move the material to the awards that are open.
- Counting hours instead of naming change. “Over 300 volunteer hours” says you were present, not that anything happened.
- A story with no other people in it. No recruits, no ask and no refusal is a solo project with a nicer name.
- Leaving out the misreading. The moment you found out the kids were not bored is what makes the rest believable.
- Ending on gratitude. “This experience taught me the value of giving back” is the sentence every reader has seen. End on what is still running, or on what the funding buys.
Where to go from here
The Loran and Schulich guide maps every large Canadian entrance award open for the 2027 entry year, with dates. The Queen’s Chancellor’s guide is where a community story goes first, because Queen’s publishes its exact questions and one of them is this one. If your best community work happened at a job or at home rather than in a club, the no-extracurriculars guide shows how to write it so it counts, and the leadership questions guide covers the spoken version. When the draft is done, AcceptMe’s essay coach will read it against the prompt and pin a note to each sentence, tagged works, tighten or fix, without writing a word for you; two reviews are free and the full coach is C$49 a month, cancel any time.
Keep reading
- Scholarship Essays and Interviews: Loran, Schulich, More How Canada's big entrance awards actually judge applicants, the questions they ask, and how to prepare essays and interview answers.
- Queen's Chancellor's Scholarship: Application and Questions The nomination rules, the December 8, 2026 deadline, the exact published questions and limits, a worked 2,500-character leadership answer and mistakes.
- Leadership Interview Questions for Students (With Answers) How to answer leadership interview questions without a title: eight common questions, two sample answers and what admissions actually listens for.