NSP scholarship: getting every document under 200 KB
The National Scholarship Portal wants each supporting document under 200 KB, and applications are more often sent back for unreadable documents than for wrong ones. How to prepare every file on your phone before you reach the cyber café.
Pre-matric, post-matric, merit-cum-means or central sector: every scholarship on the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) asks for a stack of supporting documents, and each one has to be under 200 KB.
Many students do this at a cyber café, on a slow connection, and the upload fails without saying why. The fix is to make every file ready on your phone, before you go.
The rules that matter
These are the rules NSP applications have used. The limit shown on the upload screen is the one that counts.
- Each supporting document: PDF or JPEG, under 200 KB.
- A certificate with several pages should be one file, not separate uploads.
- The same limit applies when you re-upload after a defect notice.
Who reads your documents
Your application is checked in stages: first by the nodal officer at your institute, then at district or state level. Each of them needs to read:
- the certificate number,
- your name, exactly as in the application,
- the issuing officer's stamp and signature.
This is why the goal is not just "under 200 KB" but under 200 KB and readable. Scholarship applications are sent back far more often for unreadable documents than for wrong ones.
The mistake to avoid
The quick fix is to open any online compressor and choose the lowest setting. That blurs exactly the two things a verifying officer looks for, the certificate number and the stamp.
The better approach works the other way: start from the best quality, and step down only as far as 200 KB needs, dropping colour before dropping sharpness. For a typical one-page income certificate, the result is a crisp greyscale PDF well under the limit.
KBNSP documents under 200 KBBring income certificates, caste certificates, fee receipts, marksheets and the bonafide form under the National Scholarship Portal's 200 KB limitStep by step, on your phone
- Collect the originals: income certificate, caste certificate, bonafide or fee receipt, mark sheet, bank passbook page, and whatever your scholarship lists.
- Photograph each page flat, in daylight, filling the frame, with no shadow. Better still, use the PDF from DigiLocker if you have one.
- Open the NSP preset and select the photos for one document. Several pages become one PDF under 200 KB.
- Look at the preview. Can you read the certificate number and the stamp? If a blue stamp looks faint, switch to colour. One page will still be well under 200 KB.
- Save each file with a clear name, such as
income-certificate.pdf, and keep them together. - At the café, just upload them. No compressing on a shared computer.
DigiLocker certificates
Certificates from DigiLocker are usually already small and perfectly sharp. If the tool says a file already fits, upload it as it is. Compressing a file that already fits only makes it worse.
Typed certificates
For plain printed certificates with no coloured stamp, black and white gives the sharpest text for the size.
KBBlack-and-white PDFConvert a scanned PDF or phone photos of documents to true 1-bit black & white or greyscale so they fit portal caps like 100 KB or 200 KBTwo pages, one upload slot
If a document has a front and a back, or runs across two pages, it goes in one file. Select both photos together to make a single PDF, or join two PDFs.
Join PDFs into oneCombine several PDFs into one in the order you chooseState scholarship portals
Most state scholarship portals use similar limits, often somewhere between 100 and 500 KB. The same steps work: enter your portal's number as the limit.
Quick answers
Can I do all this at the cyber café instead?
You can. Nothing is uploaded to us and no copy is kept, so it is safe on a shared computer. It is still quicker to arrive with the files ready.
The portal says my file is still too large.
Check the exact limit on the upload screen and enter that number, then make the file again.
My application came back with a "document not clear" defect.
Make the document again from the original, following the steps above, and re-upload it within the defect window. The same 200 KB limit applies.