Graduate scholarships are a substantial part of educational policies in different colleges and universities around the world. Due to colleges’ and universities’ usually high annual studying fees, different scholarship systems have been developed partly to grant the possibility of studying for gifted students that come from low-income backgrounds. Graduate scholarships are also used to reward a gifted student in upper high schools etc., and it is not always related to the student being financially challenged. Graduate scholarships are mainly used in such Northern American (United States and Canada) and in other western countries in universities that require student fees. In countries that offer free education up to universities, the type of scholarships are not used (countries of free education are example Finland, Sweden or Scotland in Europe).
The competition for graduate scholarships is quite popular among students in United States, Great Britain and other countries that hold successful highly appreciated universities. Scholarships are used in graduate and postgraduate studies widely around the world, mainly to guarantee the university’s possibilities on having gifted, motivated students. On the other hand, for example in Canada in Ontario University, just the Ontario Graduate Scholarship – program alone offers 2000 scholarships a year. Ontario Graduate Scholarship program seeks for students who dream of aiming higher in their academic education than what just basic Bachelor’s degree has to offer, and one of the applying criteria is to have the will to complete the master’s degree, PhD or Doctorate somewhere in the future. This is just an example of the criteria a graduate scholarship may hold. Some criteria can be example a certain percentage (i.e. 80 %) of studies must be completed in highest grades, a certain number of years studied, or even a very successful career as a young athlete in high school can and usually will lead to sport-related scholarships in different universities.
There are also criteria that can get you automatically rejected for scholarship, an obvious example of this is the conviction on criminal offense, especially on frauds or offenses towards the academic system. Type and length of graduate scholarships The type and length of graduate scholarships vary depending on the organization offering the scholarship. A typical example is a grant that is given to the accepted student annually during 2 to 3 years of one’s studies. Grant can be amounted such as 5000 dollars and be given to the student each term. Usually the student applies to the scholarship program so that the grant is given each term and the student studies the certain amount of years that is agreed in the scholarship-agreement. For most high-ranked and popular universities the student fees such as the acceptance requirement are very high. For these universities the competition for a graduate scholarship is naturally tougher. In most scholarship programs there is usually a certain amount of scholarships reserved to the applicants coming from foreign countries. In United States and Canada this usually means that the scholarship then contains a temporary resident permit for the accepted student. These international scholarship programs offer also a great opportunity for the gifted students in poor third world countries to use their studying potential in full-length, offering the possibility to travel legally to western countries and have a academic degree. History of graduate scholarships
One of the oldest and most appreciated scholarship programs in the world is the Rhodes- scholarship in Great Britain. The Rhodes-scholarship program was founded in 1902 in England. As many other scholarship programs before, The Rhodes-scholarship used to also be a non-equal scholarship for men only. After the development of woman’s rights and equality in Europe the scholarship became available for women as late as 1977. It can be said that the history of many scholarship systems has been manly ruled and in some cases still today is. Men and women are yet almost equally accepted for scholarships nowadays. There are many popular politicians and other highly successful persons who have completed the Rhodes-scholarship, one of them is the former president of United States Bill Clinton. Conclusion Graduate scholarships are known to offer possibilities for students world wide, and depending on the popularity they can also be used as a starting point for a successful academic career. On the other hand building a academic system based on high tuition fees and a limited number of graduate scholarship opportunities can lead to socially unequal academic possibilities.
