Searching For Scholarship

This Blog is intended to provide information for those looking for Scholarship/financial aid opportunities in the western world. It is all based on my experience and I hope you will find it help full in your search. Good luck!

What You Need for Sholarship:
To make successful application for scholarship, you need to know what are the requirements in each university and weigh it against your potentials for meeting them. Here are some of the general requirements:

Cumulative GPA(CGPA): undergraduate GPA is one of the main criteria for admission in graduate school. Most US and Canada universities require CGPA of 3:00 or above. European Universities accept a lower CGPA.
Standard tests: these tests include TOEFL, IELTS, GRE and GMAT. Almost all graduate school in USA and most universities in Canada require TOEFL and GRE. The probability of waiving either of these requirements is easier in Canadan universities, but very difficult in USA universities. However, if you are applying both for admission and financial aid, you MUST not only take these tests, but also score high. Remember, these requirement are party of the selection criteria and there are many more students around the world looking for them than are the available positions. If you don’t take these tests, in these competitive atmosphere, chances are higher your application will be eliminated at the primary stage.
With European universities, except for few top schools, most of them don’t require GRE and in most cases they can waive the TOEFL/IELTS requirement if you demonstrate that you graduate from a school with English as medium of communication. With regards to taking whether TOEFL or IELTS: most US universities prefer TOEFL while British Universities prefer IELTS. In other countries either of them are equally acceptable. However, IELTS is cheaper, payment is in local currency and is provided more frequently than TOEFL. In Eritrea, IELTS is administered by the British library and TOEFL by the University of Asmara Testing Center. Reference materials and information about TOEFL, GRE and GMAT is available at the American center in Asmara. They are located at the Eritro-Germany building. (http://asmara.usembassy.gov/eritrea/educ_advising.html)

3. Statement of purpose: appealing statement of purpose is supposed to help your admission and compensate some weakness in your GPA or standard test scores. Almost all graduate schools require statement of purpose and writing a good statement of purpose is not either easy. If you need guide lines and reference materials in writing effective statement of purpose, the American center office in Asmara has amble reference materials.

4. Application fee: almost all US universities and Canadian universities require application fee that ranges from $40 to $100. If you don’t pay these fees they will not process your application. Given the hard currency problem in Eritrea, you have to plan and figure out how to pay these fees. On the other hand, European universities don’t require application fees.

5. Application Deadlines: Most grad schools have early application deadline and application deadlines for financial aid are usually earlier than application for admission. In Most schools the application deadline ranges between January to early March. To be successful, your application package including test scores and official certificates should reach the university before the deadline date.





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Some Important Tips
Another important factor that affects your search for scholarship is the reputation of your undergraduate university. As a general rule, students who came from universities with good reputation have a higher probability of getting admission/financial aid even if their CGPA is way lower than your GPA. Unfortunately, the University of Asmara(UOA) is not a well known university in the western world. So students from UOA have to make extra steps in their search for financial aid to overcome this disadvantage. Here are some tips that you might find helpful:

Apply to a department where a University of Asmara Student is/was already enrolled. Most of Asmara University students are very successful when they came to the USA universities. Departments which have already students from University of Asmara know the quality of the students and that helps to overcome the reputation issue. To give you an example, currently the Department of chemistry at the Illinois University at Chicago has 5 teaching assistants from the University of Asmara. Similarly the Department of mathematics at the university of Illinois at Carbon dale has four students from UOA.
2. Another important point to consider is in which universities to apply: As a general rule the higher the reputation of the university the more competitive admission and financial aid are in that university. A useful strategy in this case may be to apply to a university with lower reputation and secure financial aid. Once you are here, if you have the ambition and capacity to go to a better school, you have higher probability to do so.


3. A similar strategy to secure admission and financial aid is to apply to field of studies where financial aid is easily secured. In general, there is more financial aid in hard science fields such as chemistry, mathematics, physics and the like than in social science and business departments. So it may be a good strategy to consider applying to a field that is related to your field and that provides you with financial aid.





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Funding Organization
Links for potential funding organization in USA and Europe is provided on the right side of this Blog under the "Shishay-Hakote" section. You might want to explore them in your search for scholarship.