Scholarships Tips

Top 10 UK Scholarships for International Students 2023

Michael Nzeribe2 Comments

Looking for an opportunity to study in the UK? Here’s a golden one you won’t want to miss. Apply now for any of these International Student Scholarships.

The UK Government offers the UK Scholarships 2022 to enhance bilateral relations between international communities. It will ask if there are UK scholarships for my country. Let me surprise you. Every country in the world has at least 5 Students studying in the UK.

There are Chevening Scholarships offering scholarships to over 1,500 International Students, Commonwealth Scholarships have awarded Scholarships worth over £100 million, and the Rhodes Scholarship is not far behind in awarding fully funded Scholarships to developing countries.

To help you out, here is a list of the Top 10+ UK Scholarships for International Students in 2022.

Table of Contents.

  • Top 10 UK Scholarships for International Students 2023
    • Chevening Scholarships 2023
    • The Commonwealth Scholarships for International Students 2023
    • Gates Cambridge Scholarships 2023
    • Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University 2023
    • The Edinburgh Global Research Scholarships
    • Denys Holland Scholarship at University College London
    • University of Sussex Chancellor International Scholarships
    • The International Ambassador Scholarship 
    • Bristol ThikBig International Scholarship 2023
    • Clarendon International Scholarships at Oxford University in the UK

Top 10 UK Scholarships for International Students 2023

Chevening Scholarships 2023

Chevening Scholarships, the UK government’s global scholarship program, are awarded to outstanding scholars from Chevening-eligible countries around the world. 

The awards are usually for a one-year master’s degree. Most Chevening scholarships cover tuition fees, a flat-rate living allowance (for one person), a round-trip economy air ticket to the UK, and additional grants to cover essential expenses.

READ MORE: Chevening Scholarships

The Commonwealth Scholarships for International Students 2023

Commonwealth Scholarships are intended for students from Commonwealth developing countries who wish to pursue Masters and Ph.D. studies in the United Kingdom. These scholarships are funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Each scholarship provides airfare to and from the UK, tuition and exam fees, personal maintenance allowance, thesis grant (if applicable), and initial arrival allowance, among others.

READ MORE: Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Program

Gates Cambridge Scholarships 2022

The Gates Cambridge Scholarships are awarded to outstanding applicants from any country outside the UK to pursue a full-time postgraduate degree in any subject available at the University of Cambridge. A Gates Cambridge Scholarship covers the full cost of studying at Cambridge. It also provides additional, discretionary funds.

READ MORE: Gates Cambridge Scholarships

Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University 2023

Established in the will of Cecil Rhodes in 1902, Rhodes is the oldest and perhaps the most prestigious international scholarship program in the world. The Rhodes Scholarships are postgraduate awards that support exceptional international students from selected countries at the University of Oxford. 

 A Rhodes Scholarship covers all university fees, personal stipend, health insurance, and airfare to and from the student’s home country.

The Edinburgh Global Research Scholarships

The University of Edinburgh will offer 30 scholarships to outstanding foreign students who intend to pursue a Ph.D. research program in any field of study offered by the University. Each scholarship covers the difference between the tuition fee for a UK/EU graduate student and that charged to an overseas graduate student. Prizes do not cover maintenance costs.

READ MORE: The Edinburgh Global Research Scholarships

Denys Holland Scholarship at University College London

The Denys Holland Scholarship aims to support undergraduate students from any country, who without the support of the scholarship would not be able to obtain the necessary funds to study at University College London (UCL) and who can demonstrate their intention to make full use of the activities offered by UCL and the Student Union. The scholarship is worth £9,000 per year and scholars can choose to use all or part of the scholarship to cover fees.

University of Sussex Chancellor International Scholarships

The University of Sussex Chancellor’s International Scholarships are available at most Sussex schools and are awarded based on the academic performance and potential of international students from outside the EU who have applied and been offered a place to pursue eligible full-time postgraduate degrees at the University of Sussex. The scholarship has a 50% discount on international student tuition and is offered for one year.

READ MORE: University of Sussex Chancellor International Scholarships

The International Ambassador Scholarship 

The International Ambassadors Scholarship recognizes and provides financial support to outstanding students who wish to pursue a full-time undergraduate or postgraduate degree at the University of West London. Academics will act as international ambassadors for the University of West London. Up to 50 scholarships worth up to £5,000 are available.

Bristol ThikBig International Scholarship 2023

At the University of the West of England, Bristol offers over £100,000 in scholarships to international students each year.

This includes the Chancellor’s Scholarship in which the recipient will be required to do an internship working within the Office of International Development and other departments. The scholarship covers full tuition for one academic year.

READ MORE:  University of West England Chancellor’s Scholarships

Clarendon International Scholarships at Oxford University in the UK

The Clarendon International Scholarships places many international students on a fully funded scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. The UK Scholarship for International Students offers over 100 full scholarships each year to academically excellent graduate students from around the world.

Clarendon Scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence and potential in all degree subjects at the postgraduate level at the University of Oxford.

Apply for UK Scholarship

READ MORE: International Postgraduate Scholarships of the Vice-rectorate of the UAL 

UK Scholarship FAQs for International Students

Can international students get full scholarships?

In the US alone, according to the Fulbright Commission, more than 600 universities offer scholarships worth $20,000 or more to international students.

Can international students get financial aid in the UK?

In addition to government scholarships, many non-governmental organizations and universities offer financial assistance to international students in the UK.

Which countries are best for scholarships?

Countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia are among the potential study-abroad destinations that have attracted large numbers of students from around the world due to their excellent education systems and subsequent employment opportunities. to studies.

A Guide to Writing a Winning Scholarship Essay That Stands Out.

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Due to the rising costs of education, scholarships are all but mandatory for some students if they want to get a college degree. However, all institutes don’t just hand them out easily.

Typically, they ask all applicants that want a scholarship to write an essay. They provide a prompt that applicants have to write about. The students with the best essays are then selected for the scholarship.

Many students compete with each other to obtain scholarships, but only a limited number can be selected. So, it is necessary for you to write an excellent essay that stands out from the crowd in order to be chosen.

To help you with that we have compiled a list of tips for writing a winning scholarship essay.

Tips for Writing an Excellent Scholarship Essay

There is no “formula” for writing a winning scholarship essay, but some tips can always help you out regardless. Here are nine of them.

1.     Research the Institute Providing the Scholarship

Scholarships are given out by various kinds of entities. Usually, colleges and universities provide scholarships, but sometimes other organizations can also hand them out.

Whichever entity it is, you need to conduct some research on them. You want to learn:

  • What kind of organization they are
  • What are their goals
  • What motivated them to hand out the scholarships

Information like this can help you write an essay that speaks to the scholarship committee. You have to tailor the essays according to the scholarship providers to get the best reaction.

But don’t be alarmed. This does not mean that you have to show them a fake side of yourself to get in their good books. It only means that you have to show them that your experiences can help with their mission.

2.     Understand the Prompt

Prompts given by scholarship committees are usually very open. This means that they can be interpreted in a number of ways. That’s why it is very important that you take the time to think about it and understand it.

One easy way to understand the prompt is to restate it as a question (if it is not already one). Questions help you understand what is being asked of you.

Let’s look at an example of this. A given prompt is like this:

“Reflect on the economic state of your country and your role in it”

This is a very open prompt, but if you restate it as a question:

“What is the overall state of your country’s economy and how are you impacting it?”

This is much easier to grasp and write about. It also gives you a clear direction. Direction is necessary because you need to avoid straying from the prompt. Being able to discuss one topic exclusively is valued highly in these types of essays.

3.     Choose a Topic that Interests you

As we saw already, prompts can be very open-ended, and sometimes scholarship committees give you free rein to write about anything you like.

In this case, you should always pick a topic that you are personally interested in. That way you will be able to write well and go into finer details. This can impress the committee and help you get that scholarship.

4.     Create a Strong Hook

Tips that you can use to write any good essay are also applicable to your scholarship essays. One such tip is to write a strong introductory paragraph. You want to grab your audience’s attention right from the get-go.

This is called a ‘hook’, as in you are ‘hooking’ the reader’s attention. A great way of ‘hooking’ is to use an unconventional starting line. For example, instead of saying:

“I started working in 2017”

 Say:

“It was 2017, and I was just stepping into a new phase of life”

And then go on to describe how you started working.  As you can see, the second method is more attention-grabbing compared to the first one.

5.     Talk About Your Own Experiences

Talking about your own experiences is very important. You are trying to show the committee why you are eligible for this scholarship.

This means that you have to tell them about any experiences you have had in relation to your essay prompt, and the mission of the organization that is providing the scholarship.

Your experiences also serve to make you stand out from the rest because they are unique to you.

6.     Check Your Essay for Mistakes

After you are done writing your first draft, you should start proofreading it. This is necessary for finding out any overlooked grammatical errors and incorrect facts.

Checking for grammar can be difficult because your brain automatically glosses over small mistakes.

Or, you correct them in your mind but don’t do it in your draft. An easy method for dealing with this is a grammar and punctuation checker. This a type of online tool that can detect spelling mistakes, and missing or incorrect punctuation.

With the help of a grammar checker, you can easily find out your errors and fix them. For fact-checking, you need to have done prior research first and you just need to double-check your notes.

7.     Ensure There is no Plagiarism

There are a few mistakes that can hurt your chances of getting the scholarship. One such mistake is committing plagiarism.

Now, we all know that plagiarism is wrong, and nobody does it intentionally, especially in a scholarship essay. However, accidental plagiarism can occur without your knowledge.

Nobody appreciates plagiarism and if you resort to copying the works of other people then your application will be rejected.

That’s because it is very easy to find out if a work has any plagiarism in it. Committee members check essays for plagiarism and if there is a significant amount of it, the essay is rejected.

To ensure that there is no plagiarism in your essay you can use the very same tools that are used to check for it. To check plagiarism in your essay you can go online and search for plagiarism-detecting tools.

These plagiarism-checking tools can compare written content against many online sources and highlight any matching parts. Most of them also provide detailed reports that help you edit your work and remove all instances of duplication.

8.     Avoid Clichés, Quotes, and Platitudes

Clichés are stories and themes that are so overused that they aren’t impressive anymore. To make your essay interesting avoid using any kind of clichés at all.

They make your write-up look weak and uninteresting.

Another thing you need to avoid is quotes. Students seem to think that quotes make your essays look better, but ironically, they don’t. That’s because too many people use them and they become repetitive.

Similarly, you should avoid platitudes—a statement with some moral implication that has been ‘overused’. Just like clichés, they make your work look uninteresting and weak.

9.     Give Yourself Ample Time

Never wait until the last day to start writing your scholarship essay. That will only hurt your chances of getting the scholarship. A hurriedly written essay will reflect that in its quality.

So, what you want to do is to divide the time you have before the deadline. You need to allocate a few days for research, two or three days for actually writing the essay, and then you need at least another day for proofreading and editing.

This way of dividing the tasks will help you achieve all of them comfortably and save you from getting burnt out.

Conclusion

Winning scholarship essays do not have a set template. If you were to take out just five winning essays from a single organization, you would be hard-pressed to find anything common between them.

However, with these tips, you can still ensure that you have a fighting chance at getting the scholarship.

Bad College Essays: 10 Mistakes to Avoid in 2023

Michael Nzeribe1 Comment

What is a good college essay for you? Is it one that can strike the reader like thunder with its elegance and grip of it? Or is it one that keeps readers on edge from start to finish? According to established academic standards, the most critical aspect of a good essay is its absence of errors.

However, if you are armed with the knowledge of the mistakes that are most dangerous to your job, you can greatly increase your chances of developing amazing work! Now, get ready for a list of the most common mistakes college students make in their essays that make it bad!

Yes, to impress the readers, the essays should be devoid mainly of the errors that devalue them. The difficulty of writing a perfect text in which the experts do not find a single mistake leads students to look for how to pay someone to write their article and end up browsing through online help services.

1. Skip important data

When writing an essay, you may accidentally or intentionally exclude information critical to your work. Students often make this common mistake when they think some piece of information is less important than it really is. And it is extremely difficult to distinguish between the facts and data that are required in your article and those that you should omit. 

For this reason, read a lot of material on academic writing to learn how to properly construct your work. Use reliable and critically acclaimed sources and use them wisely. You should be able to recognize the rules and recommendations that apply specifically to your job.

2. Write at the last moment

Students procrastinate, putting off pressing academic commitments and indulging in more pleasant things. In the end, they put themselves at high risk of failing their writing assignments. Completing them a few hours before the deadline is not a good idea. In fact, putting off a paper assignment is another typical mistake that college kids seem to forget.

3. Not getting a second opinion

Essay writing safety is a severe vice that prevents students from meeting the goals of good academic writing. By thinking that you are a masterful writer who does not need any advice or correction from others, you put your writing in jeopardy. To ensure that your paper maintains the proper quality, you should ask a knowledgeable person to provide feedback on your writing.

4. Not reading the topic carefully

Most of the time, college students spend very little time familiarizing themselves with the subject and this greatly affects the quality of their work. There is a misconception that an essay topic can be studied quickly and superfluously, which often disappoints students. 

Therefore, you should spend time exploring the topic before you sit down and write the article itself. Do some in-depth research and you will see how smooth and efficient the writing process will be.

5. Using the wrong fonts

It is a real challenge to find reliable theoretical materials to use in your work. The Internet presents many dubious sources that are dangerous to use when writing an academic article. 

When choosing the sources to use in your article, be discreet and vigilant and seek only reliable information. Unfortunately, many college students can’t discern what information is safe to use and end up choosing questionable posts that mislead them.

6. Give in to distractions

As you play your part, you force yourself to be distracted by everything from notifications on your devices to noise from the next room. That said, for your writing to be productive, eliminate all distractions as much as possible.

Unfortunately, for most college students, saying “goodbye” to their iPhones, iPads, and other addictive devices is a big challenge, but here’s what it means to pay due attention to writing assignments.

If you want your article to be an ultimate success, you need to reduce all distractions from your work process.

7. Regardless of the format

Many inexperienced writers, especially students, underestimate the importance of formatting in academic writing. However, adhering to the required structure of an academic article is one of the crucial aspects of successful academic writing. By adhering to the correct format, you make it compatible with academic standards and thus increase the academic value of your work.

8. Focus on one part

It is quite common for college students to get stuck in a scenario, and not proceed with their assignments as planned. When you immerse yourself in just one complex part of the essay, you get distracted from the rest of the work and can end up missing your deadline and ruining your college career.

Thus, learn to optimize the time you dedicate to the different facets of your work.

9. “Borrowing” your teammates’ mistakes

Almost all students consult their classmates when completing their writing assignments. And this trend is fraught with dangers: You never know if someone you ask for advice has followed the right course of writing.

In fact, the person you ask for help may be just as wrong as you are. Therefore, by asking your peers for advice, who also make mistakes, you simply repeat their mistakes and make things worse.

10. Not taking breaks

When you are struggling to organize ideas and concepts into thoughts as you write, it is vital that you take breaks to allow your mind and body to relax for some time. Many inexperienced writers avoid breaks, believing that the harder they work, the more successful the essay will be. But they just end up wearing out and spoiling the quality of the paper.

Summary

As long as you avoid the destructive mistakes we mentioned in this article, your articles will take on a new and refined form and bring you success. College admissions boards will not mark your essay as bad and set it aside. It is difficult to comply with the strict rules of academic writing, but what is more difficult is not to get caught up in the errors that lurk every time a scientific article is written.

10 Advantages of Studying Abroad in 2023

Michael Nzeribe13 Comments

At Pickascholarship, we know that you are motivated by the idea of ​​continuing to study, and of reaching your academic goals. Sometimes, the idea of ​​studying abroad is what moves you the most, and we understand it, there are many reasons why this plan is really good, here we leave you just 10 advantages of studying in another country.

10 advantages of studying abroad

1. You open new horizons

It’s a bit like coming out of your shell, it’s one thing to get to know the places and the people, through books or movies, and another is to be there. Maybe the Eiffel Tower seemed more impressive in the photos, but maybe you never thought it was so impressive to stand under it.

2. Your perspective on your own country changes.

You can become the main critic of what is happening in your country, but you will also be the main defender of some issues. In addition, the people around you will make you see the place where you were born with different eyes.

3. You know another language or variations of yours.

Being in a classroom and studying a language is not the same as having to communicate with people to buy, make friends, or have basic services, you will become more agile to learn that new language. If you go to a Spanish-speaking country, you will realize that the fact that it is the same language helps, but what is said in one way in your country may not be said the same everywhere, you will get a couple of misunderstandings, but you will also enrich your vocabulary.

4. You discover new things about yourself.

Surely, while you study in another country, you will be involved in situations that you have not faced before, they can be funny, sad, or challenging, and once you go through them, you will be left with the feeling of having reacted in a way that you did not recognize, and you will feel proud of this new part of you. You are going to rethink everything you have learned and maybe you will discard some things.

5. You make friends from many parts of the world.

Like you, there are more people who do not belong to that new country, it is very likely that one of them will end up being your best friend, so at the end of your stay, you will surely have an agenda full of new contacts from all over the world.

6. You expand your culture.

It is not only about food or fashion, but about the way of thinking of a community, if you understand better the thought, you will understand better the behavior.

7. You learn to listen.

Through people you also get to know the world, you want to know more about everyone, those who are from the place where you are and those who are not. You pay more attention on the subway, you will be fascinated by the different ways people express themselves, and their phrases, and possibly you will become a connoisseur of accents.

8. You risk a little more.

By, if you want to go to another country it is because you have an adventurous spirit, you will dare to do things that you might not do in your city, take a trip alone, speak in public, and translate from one language to another.

9. You also take care of yourself a little more.

Being alone in another country will give you many opportunities to take risks, and you will also realize that you prefer not to try those that can put you at risk, because yes, you are alone.

10. Your CV will have a plus.

Whatever is said, always having a degree or experience as a student abroad is a good card to put on your CV. It will make you look like an adaptable, risky, and flexible person.

In addition to all this, once you return to your country, much of what you learned abroad will continue to serve you, not only in terms of studies but also in your life.