Preparation is key for one to be successful in life. Same thing applies to getting a scholarship always be prepared. Plan way in advance; For instance if you plan to start your undergraduate or your graduate school in 1-2 years time. First you have to know what you want to study, where you want to study and the requirements for admission and admission times, how long does the embassy take and what do they require from you before they issue a student visa
Most students/scholars always worry too much about how much college costs and in the process forget about the preparation and the requirements to get you to the college that you want. Knowing what you want to study and where is very important. From this you can always check the different schools i.e. in USA, Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa and get a sense on the admission deadlines, scholarship deadlines etc. On this page the focus will be more about Canada because I have the Canadian experience and I also know many International students who attend Universities/Colleges in Canada. One quick point to note is that for graduate students most Canadian universities give some form of funding or scholarship to cover most or all your studies. I will talk more about this later.
Early Preparations
Start preparing early by checking out the following and many more
- Find out the schools that are offering the programs that you want to pursue
- Check out the application deadlines (How many time to they admit in a year – most admissions tend to be either September or January)- start early so that you have all the documents needed
- What are the admission requirements – Minimum GPA/Grades, English requirements, Letter of references, application fees.
- When are the deadline for Scholarship application – be careful with this because most Entrance scholarships might have a deadline which is earlier than the school admission
- What are the Visa requirements in your home country (give enough time for this so embassies might take more than 3 months to process your stuff!!!)
- How are your finances
Scholarship Preparations:
How do you prepare for a scholarship, Again this might require years in advance i.e. some scholarship might want you to show leadership role or community involvement. As such it is important to know what scholarships are out there and what do there require of you.
- Know what scholarships are out there and what are the requirements
- Scholarships do range from financial need, leadership role, Sports, Academic performance etc
- Start preparing early for the (ie you don’t what to be writing 1000 word essay for a scholarship that the deadline is the next day)
- Do they need any kind of references