Wanted: students for grad school scholarships
For any prospective student, the question of how to fund a masters or PhD degree abroad is an important one. Second to the choice of where and what to study, funding is the next most significant element in a student’s decision on future graduate study plans. With the financial turmoil of the last eight months, the need to locate scholarship funding is even more important, with banks such as HSBC and Santander currently reviewing their loan products for international students.
The prospects for being awarded a scholarship or financial aid as an international graduate student vary from country to country. But if the USA is your destination of choice, the opportunities for funding are generally better than in other countries. Latest figures available from the Institute of International Education in New York indicate that, despite the recent financial crisis, the availability of scholarships and other forms of financial aid is still very good for those interested in studying in the USA. In 2007/08, 47 per cent of international students enrolled in US grad schools received some form of financial support through either the university at which they were studying or another source, while a slightly lower proportion, 45 per cent, relied solely on personal or family funds.
But navigating your way through the maze of scholarships and financial aid schemes that international universities and grad schools offer is an increasingly difficult process. Each grad school has a different scholarship application process, some offering an online approach matching the requirements and deadlines of the graduate application system, while others only allow submission of financial aid material once a formal offer of admission has been received. If you’re considering applying to graduate programs in different countries, the application systems for scholarships will be different again, as will deadlines and other requirements.
Some universities find that they have too few applicants to consider for the award of financial aid.
One of the most amazing discoveries of the complicated nature of applying for scholarships is that some universities find that they have too few applicants to consider for the award of financial aid. Perhaps even more staggering is that this is not a problem confined to just one or two isolated grad schools; rather institutions all over the world face this problem on an annual basis. Melinda van Hemert, Assistant Dean for Admission and Student Services from the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy in the USA underlines the frustration many grad schools face with not having enough candidates applying for their scholarships.
“For some of our specific awards we do struggle to encourage enough applications,” she says. “Our Seiji Masuda Endowed Scholarship, for example, seeks qualified students from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Brunei but we have great difficulty reaching out to students from this area. All grad students have to do is mark ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you want to be considered for a scholarship?’”
Students often believe they don’t have a chance at being successful.
There are a number of specific reasons why scholarship funds go unused every year. One of the most significant is that students often believe they don’t have a chance at being successful – they believe that the competition is too fierce and that an application is not worth the effort. Subhrendu Sarkar, a masters student at Columbia University in New York and the recipient of the 2007 QS Innovation Scholarship recalls how he felt when he started applying for scholarships to fund his degree study. “I didn’t really believe I had much of a chance to receive a scholarship but I thought it was important to at least try. I know that many of my friends simply did not bother because they had heard that it was too difficult. When I heard them say this, I realised that the more people that felt like this, the better my chances were – so I filled in every scholarship form I could.”
인터네셔널의 45%가 장학금을 받는다고 해도 정부에서 공부만해도 돈 다대주는 아랍왕자님들과 인도 중국애들이너무 많아서 그런건 아닌가 생각이 들고..
한국은 여전히 돈이없어서 제돈들여 가는 유학은 10에 9명이 포기하는 상태...
그래도! 돈 많이 남는다니까+_+ 정보를 찾아주는 센스가 필요할때!!ㅎㅎ