This post is to help students understand certain terms when filling their scholarship forms. You will surely find it very informative, why not take your time and go through it carefully.
What is a Scholarship?
A scholarship is an award of financial help for a student to further their education. Scholarships are awarded based upon various criteria, which usually shows the values and aims of the donor or founder of the award. Scholarship money is not required to be repaid. Its fun to know that Scholarships are a major component of college financial aid in some countries such as the United States. There are various types of scholarships and below are examples;
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Types of Scholarships
The most common scholarships may be classified as;
- Merit-based: These awards are based on a student’s academic, artistic, athletic or other abilities.
- Need-based: Some private need-based awards are confusingly called scholarships, and require the results of a FAFSA.
- Student-specific: These are scholarships for which applicants must initially qualify based upon gender, race, religion, family and medical history, or many other student-specific factors. Minority scholarships are the most common awards in this category. For example, students in Canada may qualify for a number of aboriginal scholarships, whether they study at home or abroad.
- Career-specific: These are scholarships a college or university awards to students who plan to pursue a specific field of study. Often, the most generous awards to students who pursue careers in high-need areas such as education or nursing.
- College-specific: College-specific scholarships are offered by individual colleges and universities to highly qualified applicants. These scholarships are given on the basis of academic and personal achievement. Some scholarships have a “bond” requirement. Recipients may be required to work for a particular employer for a specified period of time or to work in rural or remote areas; otherwise they may be required to repay the value of the support they received from the scholarship. This is particularly the case with education and nursing scholarships for people prepared to work in rural and remote areas.
- Athletic: Awarded to students with exceptional skill in a sport. Often this is so that the student will be available to attend the school or college and play the sport on their team, although in some countries government funded sports scholarships are available, allowing scholarship holders to train for international representation. School-based athletics scholarships can be controversial, as some believe that awarding scholarship money for athletic rather than academic or intellectual purposes is not in the institution’s best interest.
- Brand Scholarships: These scholarships are sponsored by a brand that is trying to gain attention to their brand, or a cause. Sometimes these scholarships are referred to as branded scholarships.
- Creative Contest Scholarships: These scholarships are awarded to students based on a creative submission. Of increasing interest in the United States are “last dollar” scholarships. These can be provided by private and government-based institutions, and are intended to cover the remaining fees charged to a student after the various grants are taken into account. To prohibit institutions from taking last dollar scholarships into account, and thereby removing other sources of funding, these scholarships are not offered until after financial aid has been offered in the form of a letter. Furthermore, last dollar scholarships may require families to have filed taxes for the most recent year; received their other sources of financial aid; and not yet received loans.
International means something involving more than a single country. The term international as a word means involvement of more than one country. It may not generally means involving all the countries in the world when it comes to Scholarship definition. When applying for International scholarships, endeavor to check the “Eligible Countries” section so that your application is not void. Your application is said to be void if students from your Country are not qualified to apply for such scholarship(s)
Scholarship Aim
This is the purpose of the scholarship being awarded to students and must be achieved. The aim depends on the scholarship founder(s).
Scholarship Requirements
These are the documents that an applying student must have and also summit during the application process.
Course Level
This is one of the things you must know about a scholarship before applying. Scholarships can be awarded only to students at a certain course level. Course levels to mention but a few are – Undergraduate, masters, PhD etc.
Study subjects
These are field of study in which only students from those fields can apply. E.g Medical, Engineering, Law etc.
Scholarship value/award
Value
This is what a student will stand to get or achieve if he/she is successful. In other words, its what awaits the winners.
Award
shows the number of scholarships available for student to get. It could be 5 or 10 depending on the sponsor.
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Scholarship deadline
This is when the scholarship application portal will be closed. If a student summits after this period or stipulated time, it will be rejected despite the fact that you may be qualified or not.
Eligibility
A student is eligible if he/she satisfies the necessary requirement listed above or stated by the sponsor.
Scholar
This word sometimes makes someone confused. A person may be a scholar but doesn’t know he/she is a scholar. I composed this article to clarify some terms in scholarships which are sometimes difficult to be understood by students.
Below are what you should understand when you see the seven-letter word.
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Scholar
- A scholar is a person who has studied a subject for a pretty long time and knows a lot about it.
- Also, he/she is an intelligent and well-educated person who knows a particular subject very well.
- Most importantly you have to know that he/she is someone who has been given a scholarship to study anywhere.
So, are you a scholar based on these definitions?
That is how far we can ride. You can do well by Scanning this blog for latest scholarships and Frequently asked questions during scholarship application or better still check out this awesome universities in Europe.
Thanks for reading our posts – Best wishes!