External Financial Aid – Part 3

Here are some more financial aid sources. Most of these are private charity trusts that provide support for higher studies. The amount of money or any other type of support provided need not be substantial. But I guess every drop of water counts when you are student

Name of the Fund/ Organization/ Scholarship	Location	Type	Remarks
Shri Brihad Baharatiya Samaj	Mumbai, India	Loan
Birla Education Trust	Pilani, India	Gift / Grant
G. B. Kimaye Scholarship Fund	Pune, India	Gift / Grant
G.D. Gokhale Charitable Trust	Mumbai, India	Gift / Grant
H.D. Mody and S.D. Mody Charitable Trust	Mumbai, India	Gift / Grant	Only for Parsi Community Students
DEBESH- KAMAL SCHOLARSHIP	Kolkata, India	Loan	The scholarship is for a maximum period of 1 year and the amount is approximately Rs 1 lakh.  http://www.sriramakrishna.org/welcome.html
A.M.M. Arunachalam – Lakshmi Achi Overseas Loan Scholarship	Chennai, India	Loan
Lokmanya Memorial Trust	Pune, India
Anjuman-E-Islam Charitable Trust	Mumbai, India
Khudabadi Amil Panchayat	Mumbai, India	Loan	Interest free loan for members of the panchayat. Sindhi Community only.

 

If anyone has more information on these sourses of funds or want’t to contribute to the list, please post a comment here and I will update the list.

Back to blogging

Months have passed on after I wrote my last blog post. MBA life is both – busy and fun. You usually either have loads of assignments and study to do or you will be found at a party with all of your class mates. Small class size has its own advantages

Anyways, I will be posting a third post on “External Financial Aid” soon. Also, some of the posts here are now irrelevant/old and I will soon clean my blog to make it more relevant for new applicants and current students.

Keep reading.

Off to Saint Louis

Tomorrow at this time I will be on my way to St Louis. So the first step of the new journey will begin soon. Although I am yet to finish all of my packing, it feels good to be just a day away from boarding my flight.

External Financial Aid – Part 2

As promised in my previous post (External Financial Aid – Part 1), I am posting here the details of all the organizations that provide financial assistance for higher studies. Each of the organizations mentioned here provide financial assistance based on their own set of rules and criteria and its mostly impossible to make a guess of whether an applicant will actually receive any assistance after applying. Some of them are for all programs, some for only particular fields of study (like medical studies, art and culture, economics, etc) and some are country specific.

So do not bank to fund your studies based on these grants (except in 1 or 2 cases mentioned below). The dead lines for each scholarship/fund varies and the sooner you start the better it will be. I missed out on a few very good onces because I got in touch with the authorities after the deadline for collecting the application forms. Due the many details that I am posting for each scholarship, the posts will be very big in length and hence I will split the names of these scholarships/awards into multiple posts.

Name of the Fund/ Organization/ Scholarship	Location	Type	Remarks
ITC (Indian Tobacco Company) Overseas Scholarships	Kolkata	Gift / Grant	Master’s in Business Management/Environment Engineering/ Environment Management degree in UK and USA – commencing in autumn of the years of the award In UK: London School of Economics and Manchester Business School In USA: Stanford, Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton, MIT Sloan, Haas (UC, Berkeley) and Ross (U Michigan) Very good – in terms of amount and reputation. Limited to only the above mentioned schools/courses Contact ITC after getting an admit.
TOEFL India Scholar Programme	Princeton, NJ, USA	Gift / Grant	Requires essays on future goals, your extra-curricular involvement, family background, etc. Two recommendations Very good amount ($10,000)
AGA KHAN Foundation	New Delhi, Mumbai and other offices across the globe.	Loan + Gift / Grant	One of the best options – covers full tuition 50% tuition is gift and rest is a loan at 5% interest. Highly reputed. For candidates from developing nations like India. Check the website for all country names. Three recommendations and SoP required. Highly competitive selection process – open to candidates from many countries.
JN TATA Endowment Fund	Mumbai	Loan	Another very good option. Highly competitive. Open for all courses in India and Abroad. Interest free loan of up-to INR 800,000.00 Requires two recommendations, one guarantor, SoP and additional references. Highly reputed in India.
American Alumni Association	Mumbai	Gift / Grant	Provides free passage. Easy online application.
Sir Ratan Tata Trust	Mumbai	Gift / Grant	Provides INR 40,000.00 for travel. Open to all candidates going abroad.
Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program	New Delhi	Gift / Grant	Open to candidates across the globe. Highly competitive. Highly reputed. Grants are named. In India, only candidates with permanent address in the following states are eligible to apply: Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, Delhi, Punjab, J&K, West Bengal and all north-eastern states. The above rule is a little bit strange. But the rules are rules. Period.
British Chevening Gurukul Scholarship for Leadership and Excellence	British Council in Mumbai, Delhi.	Gift / Grant	One of the best options for study in UK. Covers full program fees, return air fare, VISA application fees and living expenses. Apply online at the council only. Applicants SHOULD NOT apply directly to the UK programme Providers.
Dr Manmohan Singh Scholarships	British Council in Mumbai, Delhi.	Gift / Grant	For Doctoral Studies at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, UK. Highly reputed. Fully funds the program of study (Academic fees, air fare, VISA, monthly stipend, etc)
COMMONWEALTH SCHOLARSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS	British Council in Mumbai, Delhi.	Gift / Grant	Provides academic fees, return travel, allowance for books, apparatus, approved study, travel, personal maintenance (plus allowances, where applicable, for spouse and children). Fixed Research Support Grant in case of research.
Charles Wallace India Trust	British Council in Mumbai, Delhi.	Gift / Grant	Fully Funded Awards in the arts and heritage conservation fields of study.
GOA EDUCATION TRUST (GET) AND DE SOUZA TRUST GOA SCHOLARSHIPS	British Council in Mumbai, Delhi.	Gift / Grant	Covers VISA and Full or part tuition fees. Only for residents of the state of Goa or born of Goan parents. Applicant should not be more than 30 years old at the time of applying for the scholarship. Must have confirmed admission for any academic course of study in the UK for up to one year.
Dawoodbhoy Fazalbhoy muslim educational trust	Mumbai		Open to all Muslim students from India for professional studies.

 

More names and details will come soon. Keep checking this space.

External Financial Aid – Part 1

External financial aid is the financial assistance that a student can receive from sources other than the school or the university. It primarily comes from the numerous charitable organizations that provide scholarships or loans to students going for higher studies. Many times such a financial assistance is not related to the one received from the school, if awarded. However, in some cases the students have to notify the school of any external award/grant they receive and the amount awarded externally is then adjusted to the amount received from the school.

An external financial aid can be in various forms:

Gift Award: An outright grant by an organizations based on your application strength or need. There is no contest to be won in order to receive such an award. This is awarded many times by NGOs that do numerous types of charities including but not limited to helping people in attaining higher level of education. Such awards are mainly given on a need-cum-merit basis.

Loan Scholarship: A loan with either no or very low interest rate. This is also awarded most of the times by NGOs that do numerous types of charities including but not limited to helping people in attaining higher level of education. The amount received can vary from being small part of the tution to full tuition. These are normally the most sought after scholarships due to the possibility of getting an interest free full-tuition loan.

Loan-cum-gift: These are a mix of the above two categories where-in a part of the aid is given as gift and the rest of the amount has to be returned to the awarding organization at a later date.

Competition bases awards: These are in the form of essay competitions or some other form of contests. Some of these awards are open to all through out the academic circles but some are available only at the schools or universities with whom the awarding organization has a relationship. Sometimes these are not awarded by charities but by corporates who are trying to identify potential high performing employees.

Finally: Any other form that I do not know yet

In most cases every awarding organization has its own set of rules and eligibility criteria. Like your business school applications, these applications are also time-consuming and require a lot of effort. Most of them ask for a Statement of Purpose (similar to your career goals essay), recommendations, academic record and financial background information. In case of aid distributed by charity organizations, the amount is small but its available to many applicants. Sometimes only your travel expenses are covered, sometimes only a part of the tuition fees is covered and sometimes the entire tuition fees is covered (with some conditions). However, just as every drop of water constitutes to overall ocean, every small grant is helpful to the students.

The most important aspect here is to identify the numerous organizations that distribute such financial assistance. An important source of information for this is the school or university website. The financial aid section of each b-school website lists numerous sources of financial aid for all students – domestic and international. Here are some of the example links:

http://www.olin.wustl.edu/academicprograms/MBA/TuitionFinancialAid/Pages/Scholarships.aspx

http://www.london.edu/programmes/mba/scholarships.html

http://scholarz.info.googlepages.com/scholarship_guide.pdf

An important thing to remember here is that in many cases these lists are indicative and the students have to get in touch with the concerned organizations themselves. Each organization has its own deadline to apply and also its own set of eligibility criteria. Non-indian candidates can follow the links in the financial aid section of numerous b-schools or universities to identify the organizations where they can apply.

After an intensive search for the available options for Indian applicants, I was able to make a list of about 78 organizations that provide financial assistance for higher studies. The information available on the internet (or via any other source) was usually incomplete and I had personally get in touch with each organization to understand if I was an eligible candidate or not. It took me more than six weeks to identify the final 12 organizations where I was eligible to apply. The information received was not up-to-date or complete. Many of the organizations have now stopped providing any financial assistance, some do not exist any more, some provide assistance only to people following a particular religion or belonging to a particular community and so on.

My list was down to 12 as I was eligible to apply only the most generic scholarships that are open to everyone from India. The competition for such open category (as we refer to the people who do not belong to any reserved section of the society) is highly intense as people from both open and reserved category are eligible to apply. People from India will understand what I am trying to say here. As a result of this intense competition, the chances of getting any award are very low. Like the admission process, it all again drills down to your past academic record (read GPA), past awards received, recommendations, undergraduate school reputation, your current financial standing vis-a-vis that of other applicants, post graduation (not just post MBA ) goals, etc.

I will soon post a list of all legitimate organizations that still provided financial assistance for higher studies to Indian citizens. As far as my current standing is concerned, my application was rejected by 4 organization, I have interviews scheduled with 2 of them, I am waiting for the results from 4 organizations and I received an award from 2 organizations . The overall amount is minute when compared to my total expenses for the two-year MBA program at Olin, but when it comes to filling up the ocean I guess every little drop of water counts.

Where the hell have you been?

“Where the hell have you been?” is what some of my friends and blog visitors have been asking me very frequently now. For the record, I was just busy with winding up my job (yes I am a free bird now), cleaning up the mess in my room (took me 2 full days and still its only 2/3rd complete), getting my Student VISA and looking for some additional financial aid for studies abroad.

I received my Student VISA. The process was time-consuming in terms of filling up all the forms and arranging all the documents as expected. But once this was done, it was just a cakewalk. The entire VISA application process is actually very streamlined. The interview went quick and I just had to face 3-4 questions related to my program and my ability to fund my education. That is it.

Indian applications who have questions related to the VISA application can post a comment here and I will try my best to help everyone. However, before posting your queries please read the guidelines or the steps for applying for a VISA at http://vfs-usa.co.in. This site is specific to India. For the VISA application guidelines for other countries, please visit this site first: http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_1750.html.

My room. Ahh. After two days of cleaning my room and removing the extra stuff that had gathered over time I realized that I had 30+ brochures from different business schools, some books that I had finished reading long back but didn’t return them to their rightful owners and many printed copies of my essays. The room is now in a much better shape and there seems to be a lot of space now

As far as additional financial aid is concerned, I was hunting down all the trusts and organizations that provide some sort of financial aid to Indian applicants who are going abroad for higher studies. This whole thing was more difficult than the actual MBA applications and it deserves a separate post. I will post the details of all the information that I now have after my month-long marathon of finding the correct financial aid donors and applying to each one of them.

Finally, it is tme for some shopping.

ClearAdmit BoB results

I just noticed that I was the top 5 blogger in the ClearAmit Best of Blogging list this year. I didn’t know I was such a good blogger . It seems like my hard work at posting some relevant information for new applicants is paying off. I just won the Best School Selection Advice for one of my posts

Seems like people are liking what I am posting here. This has kind of increased my interest in blogging now. I actually started posting on my MBA journey just out of the excitement during this application process. I hope to continue posting on my MBA journey. Although now I will be focusing on post admit phase of this journey. The BoB poll also made me aware of a few student bloggers who are really good at blogging. They highlight their experience at their respective b-schools in an excellent manner. I am actually surprised by their dedication on posting on a regular basis. I hope will make it to the top 3 of the best student bloggers next year. So keep reading people.

Note: I thank all of my regular readers for making the visitor count go beyond 15K, ClearAdmit for organizing this competition and BoB Celebrity Judges and the fellow bloggers who voted for me.