Searching for Scholarships

The minute you decide you want to study abroad you should begin looking for scholarships. Deadlines for many of these scholarships end early and you want to apply for as many as you can because studying abroad is never cheap. For my trip in the summer, I started looking and applying for scholarships in the fall before, and even with all of my applying I only got one. It is tough competition,so here is my advice:

1. Ask your adviser for any scholarship information they have. Many times you need an academic and financial adviser to approve of your application when you send it, so you want to keep them updated and informed on what you are doing. Personally, I was in my advisers office almost daily to ask questions and get tips.

2. Make sure you leave yourself plenty of time to write your scholarship essays. Unless you are the perfect writer you will definitely want someone to edit your paper. I cannot stress this enough because the more grammatical errors you have, the worse your chance to be chosen is. Another hint in this area is to try and make your paper unique. Don't be afraid to be yourself in your paper and to tell your readers exactly why you want to study abroad. Put passion into it. When I was writing my essay for the Gilman Scholarship, I wrote of my favorite singer, G-Dragon, and how his music inspired me to travel to another country so that I could learn Korean and sing along with him. Now this is not exactly an academic reason to travel abroad, but if you support your reasoning enough and tell how your experience well encourage you to grow, even academically, trust me, the scholarship committee will see that you are telling the truth and that you really care about traveling abroad.

3. Submit your application on time with all documents, and if any information changes, make sure you inform the committee who will be reviewing your scholarship. If information is incorrect and they know about it, you will not be receiving any scholarship.

4. If you are chosen as a recipient for a scholarship, make sure you accept it and reply with any needed information or documents as soon as possible. Some scholarships have deadlines for when you need to submit follow-up material, and if you miss it, they will think you are declining the scholarship. This is important!

My number one tip for planning to study abroad and for applying for scholarships is to stay organized. I keep a folder for all of the documents that I need and for what I might need. I also make multiple copies of all these documents because if you use it once, it is likely that you will need it again. Having extra copies make things easier and saves time. It is also nice to just have a record of everything that you are doing.


So now to the really helpful part. Here are a bunch of links to scholarship websites and scholarship search engines:
Gilman Scholarship
Boren Scholarship
Foundation for Asia-Pacific Education
Freeman-Asia
Global Studies
Associaton of Teachers of Japanese
Study Abroad Immersion
Study Abroad.com

These are just some links and most are for Asian study abroad sites. There are many more though, and it takes a lot of time to search through the internet to find them so try to put aside a day or two to do so.

For those of you interested in the scholarship I received, here is some information:
The Benjamin A. Gilman scholarship is from the Institute of International Education and it is sponsored by the U.S. Depatment of State. Any student enrolled at a two or four year college, whom is currently receiving a Federal Pell Grant, can apply provided that they of course are planning on studying abroad. Scholarships are given out for summer, fall, and spring terms and up to $5,000 can be received. Students with high financial need, disabilities, diverse ethnic background or students studying in non-traditional countries are usually chosen as winners. Only about 500 people are chosen every year. If someone does in fact receive this scholarship, they are also able to receive an additional $3,000 if they are studying a critical need language. This includes Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Persian, Swahili, Indic, and Turkic.
Overall, I really think this is a good scholarship. It is one of the bigger scholarships out there that can be received and if you really put your heart into applying, I know you could get it too.

If anyone has any questions about how to apply for scholarships, writing essays, or anything in general, please comment and I will try to help as much as possible. As a recipient of the Gilman Scholarship and as a student who has gone through this whole process, I understand the need to ask many questions, so please do so.