How to apply for a scholarship as an international student

A year before you graduate from secondary school, the scholarship search for university begins.

When it comes to seeking financial aid to study at a university abroad, everything can get a bit messy. The key is knowing where to look and how to get started, and I hope this article can help you with that.

There is, unfortunately, no shortcut to finding scholarships; it involves a lot of Google searches and paying attention to advice from articles that have done the research for you. In my case, it helped a huge amount that I had no preference on university, country and I honestly wasn’t committed to any one subject area. As a keen all-rounder, I applied to study theology at two UK universities, creative writing at another; I committed to changing to physics as soon as I got to Canada and then eventually wound up majoring in anthropology.

The application process

At undergraduate study, it is common for all applicants to be automatically considered for merit-based scholarships. This is consistent with international applications, too.

However, for major scholarships (covering up to 100 per cent of all tuition costs, fees and living expenses), there are a few more hoops to jump through – something I experienced throughout my application to the International Scholars Programme at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Most scholarship applications will require:

• Application forms outlining your personal details, your grades and your choice of academic programme and campus, as well as a few short essays to be completed
• A résumé of awards, achievements and extracurricular activities
• Letters from nominators (school counsellor) and an academic referee (a teacher at school)
• Documents on your parents’ financial situation to confirm that you wouldn’t be able to attend the university without support.

Make sure that you collect these within plenty of time of the deadline.

The next deadline I had to meet was for the general UBC application on 1 December (2018). The application process was done entirely online. It focused largely on my predicted grades but also presented a few short essay questions.

2 April 2019: I receive an email confirming my acceptance on to the International Scholars Programme at UBC.

At this point, I’d like to emphasise that such huge scholarships are not a one-and-done process; I had been accepted, but the work didn’t stop there. Scholarship recipients may be required to maintain a certain grade point average in every course and attend classes regularly, while balancing regular meetings with advisers, scholars’ events and leadership pursuits outside academia.

If these requirements are not met, the university has the right to withdraw funding. Many people think the scholarship money comes as a lump sum gift to overachieving high schoolers – but this isn’t the case. You earn your first instalment aged 18, but you keep earning it throughout the years that follow.

Postgraduate scholarships

As I approach the start of my master’s this September, it has been interesting to see how international funding differs for postgraduate studies. In short: there’s a lot more of it. Most of this is subject-specific, with candidates receiving university funding for their work in research, and those with industry experience often securing workplace funding for an MBA or qualifications in finance or law.

That said, there are also all-encompassing international scholarship programmes that focus on leadership or social change, rather than the subject you study. Some of these are unique to – and funded by – a single university. Others have government support, allowing candidates the choice of institution if selected (examples include Fulbright and Chevening, among others).

Postgraduate international scholarship programmes such as those tend to be extremely competitive because they can be open to candidates with industry experience as well as new graduates. Compared with undergraduate programmes, much more work is expected of applicants: they are responsible for nominating themselves, collecting their own references and attending information sessions in the years preceding.

Final thoughts

International scholarship programmes were established to recruit high-achieving students from around the world who can contribute to the diversity of the campus experience and help to build a supportive and influential alumni network. In no uncertain terms, these programmes also change lives, giving students a study opportunity that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

It might seem like a lot of work for a statistically slim chance of success, but don’t let worries about not being good enough stop you from applying for these big scholarships.

The first lesson I learned as an international scholar at UBC came when I first met my cohort and saw that those people – the ones who worried they weren’t good enough to be there –  were exactly the people who had been selected.