UNAIR NEWS – Education is the foundation of Nation’s development. As we know well, the history of our struggle against colonialism was initiated by the scholars. If then, education was only for the nobibilties, now, all people have the same opportunity to study.
Many institutions, from the governments or the private sector, offer scholarships until doctoral degree, from a short course to a long term study. Going to the university funded by scholarship programs are dreams of many people, especially for someone with financial difficulties. These are the first steps to get scholarships. May they be useful.
1. Collect Information
Information on scholarships can be found in the Internet by punching in the relevant keyword. For example if you are looking for S1 degree scholarship, punch in S1 scholarship as keyword.
In addition, there are many websites which provide information on scholarships, such as beasiswapascasarjana.com, scholarship-positions.com, and so on. The websites usually provide mailing service to send updates on their provided scholarships. We can input the scholarship category, such as the degree, the major, and the scholarship type (full or partial scholarship).
2. Select the Information
With a lot of information we get, next we need to choose the right scholarship for us, appropriate with our expectation and capability. Pay attention to the requirements, registration deadline, and the coverage and duration of the scholarship.
3. Prepare the Administrative Requirements
After deciding which scholarship to apply, we then prepare the requirements especially the administrative requirements. Some of the administrative requirements are the diploma and transcripts, portfolios, letter of achievements, letter of recommendation, plan of study, languages proficiency certificates and so on.
Until now, all scholarships required the applicants to be proficient in English. Some scholarships in non-English speaking country sometimes also required them to learn the language of the country.
4. Study the Selection Stages
The stages from every scholarship are different to each other. There are scholarships which only select applicants from their administrative requirements, some are with written test and interviews.
If there is only administrative selection, make sure you have completed the requirements and they are relevant with the applied scholarship. Include your research portfolios relevant with the major you are taking to convince the reviewers that you can do the study well.
Your study plan is also a point need to be considered. Reviewers select applicants with clear plan of study. So they can lay out where the applicants will be stationed.
If there are written tests, study well. The committee usually gives some points on what will be tested. For the interviews, they focused on the applicants’ backgrounds such as family, motivation to study and aspirations.
5. Use your Connections
The fifth step could be the most important step of all. If you have seniors which get the same scholarship with the one you want. You can ask for information and advice to them. It will surely make your chance to get the scholarship bigger.
Goodluck! (*)
Author: Inda Karsunawati
