In my search to get international scholarships for students with low CGPA, I stumbled upon this article on LinkedIn and hope it would be of great benefit. The fact still remains that majority of people will graduate with low CGPA, perhaps due to life situations or due to prevailing conditions at the time of their study. Does this mean that such people can not aspire to be the best in their career later in life or cannot be successful in securing a scholarship to further their studies?

Spare few minutes to read this article:

Recently I have been receiving a lot of requests from my colleagues and student, asking me to help them prepare an application for a foreign scholarship. So before I move on from here, I would like to acknowledge that how difficult and important it is to go for higher studies, especially when you do not have excellent grades.

For most student, it is very difficult to fund their higher studies, because they like me come from average income families, plus it takes tens of thousands of dollars. In spite of all this, having a lower CGPA shakes student's belief a lot more. They believe and the common notion is as well, that in order to get foreign scholarship student is required to have an exceptional CGPA.

But the problem is not all student can have exceptional CGPA and I have seen a lot of students living a life of quiet desperation because, for some, higher education is their dream of life.

So, first of all, let me clear one thing. In order to get a foreign scholarship, you do not need to have exceptional CGPA.

At this point, you may doubt my authority, that if am I really qualified to talk on this topic. So just to boost your confidence, I will introduce my educational career. Please note, I have achieved what I wanted to, so what I am sharing is not to impress you, rather to “impress upon you” that if it is possible for me then it is possible for you as well.

Since the year 2003 till now, I funded all of my education via scholarships and most important, I was not at the top of the class, I had average CGPA. And in spite of average CGPA, I got five scholarships, two national and three prestigious internationals (Erasmus Mundas Scholar, Marie Slovakia Curie Fellow, Italian National Research Scholar). And I repeat again, I am an average student academically.

So I am going to share my tips that I used, to get the scholarship. My educational profile clearly says that GPA is not the driving factor..! It is just one tool in the entire tool of the applications that you submit to the university.

This also means that there are other factors as well, we can work on and increase our chances to get a scholarship.

1. Up Work: At this point, if you are expecting, me to give you the silver pill and you will get the scholarship this is not going to happen. It is raw hard work simply stated. To cover what you lack in numbers.

a. Start your research for the field you are planning to apply one year earlier. And start building your resume. What to build in a resume you may ask. Do volunteer research and publish research papers. There are tons of conferences and journals publishing papers, attached with someone and ask his help, if one, then better is a journal paper if two better be conference papers. Most students are going or almost all the student intends to go to Europe, USA, UK, Australia, Please note these countries are very research oriented.

b. Your job experience, it is better if it matches with the Master or PhD degree or research position. If not it still is very valuable. The best scenario is, that your job experience and your research publication and your job that you are applying for, they match, like aligned stars.

2. Deciding prior which country you are intending to apply. Because each country has different admission requirements. And dates on which you can apply for a scholarship may vary. This can give you time to go through the bureaucratic issues and still be able to apply in time.

3. Let's assume you are planning to apply for Europe, Please note, there are several official websites which post scholarship positions. Euraxess, daad, are the names of few…Plus most important, you have to stay away from the competition. Most of the time, scholarships offered by local governments are less competitive, although they are not very well paid. But they still give you enough to live comfortably and study without doing odd jobs.

4. Now narrow down Universities, It is better to make a good quality application to few universities, rather a lot of low-quality application to a lot of universities. Prepare your application very well, since you have to prepare for it for a year now…If some university asks you to pay an application fee, it better because there will be low competition.

5. Now comes the stage, what component of your application should have. Do you know 80/20 rules, This means, what few factors of your application impact the most for your scholarship, those are

a. Resume

i. Showing your Job experience and research profile aligned together.

b. Statement of Purpose/Letter of Motivation

i. In this, you show your intent to pursue your degree,

ii. Address following in your SOP

1. Why do you want to pursue in this research field?

2. What problems there are that you will solve?

3. It does not matter, if they are the real-world issue, a team is there to check your intent, so do not waste time, finding, the troubles that are threatening the world?

4. How can you solve that problem and how your skill set serves this purpose?

5. Do not put stories, any argument you put, back it by example and reference. Note the admission team screens, hundreds; if not thousand letters like this, they can tell easily, from which website, you copy which paragraph?

6. Also, address your future plans, it is far better to say that you are planning to pursue your career in the same field that you are applying.

c. Letter of reference

i. As far as the letter of references is concerned, on average two are required and must ask you to forward it to the concerned team.

ii. There is nothing wrong, in requesting your supervisor to write a good letter of reference in your favour, give your CV.

iii. As I said, some people feel shy in, telling other people how good they are and what their achievements are. This is not that time. Be proactive, and tell your supervisor, what your achievements are.

iv. Request your supervisor, to quote an example if he is stating your achievement in the letter.

1. For example, he says” Mr.X is good in management, then ask him to quote an example, like “Mr.X, manage, international research conference last year.

Finally, you need to have patience, and ability to accept rejection. Please note there are thousands of competent student making an application every year. You need to figure out, how you can fill the gap what you lack in CGPA.

For Job and Scholarship opportunities, visit: http://www.hotproforum.com/topic696.html?sid=0009a070755ad1e9102803ad0cbed43c

If you want to study in the UK.


Kindly send an email to ac6746@coventry.ac.uk


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