Getting an international scholarship involves a lot of steps but just like everything else in life, it starts with a simple step. The first step in getting a scholarship is actually finding the right scholarship for you at the right University. This step is indeed a challenging task but not if you know the right secrets and not-so-known shortcuts!
So how do you find them? Let me count 3 ways.
Find Scholarships in Search Engines
Today, everything can be found using search engines. Knowing the right tips and tricks can help you find more relevant results for your scholarship search. For example, you want to find scholarships in your chosen field of study – Masters in Business Administration or MBA. Typing “MBA scholarships” will already give you a lot of relevant results but what if you want to see the latest MBA scholarships that are being offered, how would you do it?
(Note: This works only for Google). First, you type and enter the keyword “MBA scholarships” just like you normally do. Once you get to the results page, you now paste this string of words: &as_qdr=m at the end of the URL and press enter. Doing this will give you only the web pages on MBA scholarships that have been published in the last month. You can choose to filter results in the last 24 hours (&as_qdr=d), the last week (&as_qdr=w), or the past year (&as_qdr=y1).
To get specific search results, you have to add relevant modifiers to your keywords when you make your query. In scholarship search, relevant modifiers include “deadline (insert month)”, “study in (insert location)”, and “for (insert nationality, country of origin)”. In our example, specific keywords could be “MBA scholarships for Indians deadline December 2009”, “MBA scholarships for Indians in Europe” or any combination of keywords and modifiers that would best define your search. The key here is to be specific. Put the keyword/s inside quotation marks (“”) only when you want exact search results for that keyword.
Aside from Google and Yahoo, you can search for scholarships in different platforms like Blog/Blog Networks (using Google Blog Search), Twitter (using Twitter search), and even Facebook (search for scholarship groups).
Find Scholarships in Scholarship List/Databases
A lot of free resources on international scholarships are in the world wide web. Many websites and blogs compile scholarships available for international students and provide this service for free. Most of these websites have built-in search engines or allows for categorized browsing of scholarships.
You can find these websites in reputable directories of websites and blogs (such as Dmoz Directory, Yahoo Directory, Alexa, etc). You can also chance upon these websites when you do your search in search engines. Be careful to choose only the websites that add value to your search. When you do find the good websites, you can greatly benefit by subscribing to their updates.
Find Scholarships in the Websites of Universities and Scholarship Providers
Finding international scholarships requires knowing WHO offers them. Visit the websites of governments, embassies, and major international donors to know about the scholarship programs they offer. Some of these agencies provide special scholarship databases that allows students to find international scholarships offered by scholarship providers (e.g. DAAD Scholarship Database) or scholarships available for study in a specific country (e.g. grantfinder.nl – study in Netherlands).
We also know that a number of Universities offer scholarships as part of their international programs. Moreover, donor organizations and institutions often administer their scholarship programs through Universities. Not all Universities have programs for international students and not all administer scholarships in behalf of donor agencies, so obviously you have to find Universities that do. You can start by shortlisting the Universities where you plan to study and manually visiting the Universities’ websites and finding out if your University of choice offer scholarships for international students.