Common Expenses Covered in Scholarship

Colleges are expensive and studying abroad may cost a fortune to many. A major chunk of the undeniable expenses of studying abroad includes living costs out of your home country. Apart from the money spent on tuition fees, the cost of educational supplies, college meals, conveyance, house rental/hostel, groceries, international travelling, project expenses, etc. doubles the cost you have planned for this duration.

For this, most of the aspirants end up taking loans. Applying to scholarships may help you ease out the repayment of your educational loans, repayment of which can be really exhausting. In order to support the expenses, you may check out the list of scholarships for international students that may prove to be helpful. If a scholarship process is new to you, you might want to check out how and when to apply for an international scholarship.

Major Aspects of Scholarships

There are various aspects of a scholarship awarded to an applicant, below are the factors that influence an applicant's expenditure:

Amount of Scholarship Received

The first question often asked about scholarships is the amount that would be granted. This varies from organisation to organisation, some scholarships may promise you to waive 50% of the tuition fee. The amount of money rewarded also on the type of scholarship being awarded.

Types of Scholarships

You must understand that there are two main types of scholarships, one is merit-based and the other one is need-based. A merit-based scholarship is granted on the basis of your overall academic performance in the past or in the recent GMAT exam, whereas a need-based scholarship is where you show your requirement of supporting your educational programme in financial terms.

Scholarships to Study Abroad

Scholarships to Study Abroad are need-based and are mostly granted to students belonging to developing countries. This included a tuition fee waiver. Note that the tuition fee is waived only for the first year in this type of scholarship. You would need to apply for it again for the coming years at the beginning of the financial year.

Expenses: Another query that the international colleges granting scholarships come across is the range of expenses a scholarship covers. This again depends upon the type of scholarship you apply for. The basic expenses that can be covered in scholarships include college tuition fees, major living expenses per month, air tickets of economy class to and from your home country, and last but not least, the additional grants and essential stipends.

Purpose of Scholarships for Studying Abroad

Regarded as an educational investment, the purpose of designing a scholarship is brilliantly planned to help out its procurers. The basic purpose of designing an international scholarship is to ease out clearing the educational loans that you take up to afford your tuition fee or the basic educational cost and living expenses in a foreign country. The expense directly related to studies is money spent on education supplies for which students prefer renting stuff, is also coverable in some cases. An interesting fact about scholarships is that some colleges offer awards that cover your conveyance charges and meals to make your life in a foreign country easy. Nevertheless, there are some requisites that come along with scholarships from almost every organisation.

Every scholarship has its own criteria of being rewarded to the students which vary with every organisation. While some of the scholarships give you relaxation of how you wish to use the award money, some of them are designed in a specific way to aid your expenses in a certain manner. This has a major impact on the range of expenses that can be covered using the rewarded money.

You might be interested to know:

• How to Get a Scholarship to Study Abroad?
• Types of Scholarships available for Study Abroad Aspirants

How will you spend the scholarship money if awarded?

At times, you get the fund in one lump sum before the commencement of college. However, sometimes, the fund is disbursed in installments. And other times, scholarship money can be distributed midway through a semester. Since scholarships are meant to pay for college, you can always use the fund to pay the tuition fee or for housing, books, food or even for other required resources to study such as a computer or software.

The bottom line is to check with both the scholarship organization and the financial aid office of your school to know about the guidelines for spending your scholarship money. If you find the rules to be too limiting, find out if the committee can make an exception. By taking the time to learn about the spending rules, you can use your scholarship award where it will help the most.

Do Scholarships pay for Housing?

All those students who will get admitted to a higher institution and will stay in a dorm or apartment will be liable to pay the housing expenses. Various scholarships provide for board and room expenses. The scholarship award documents shall provide the necessary details on housing if your scholarship has an option for it. If in case, you are unable to find the information on housing, connect with the scholarship provider and confirm whether or not your scholarship will provide room and board.

What does the Scholarship cover?

Tuition Fees: This includes the predefined tuition fees a college charges for various courses. A scholarship might be designed to waive off your 100% tuition fees or maybe some part of it.

Educational Supplies: Goods such as textbooks, sample papers, practice tests, guides, etc. may cost more than your expectation and disrupt your budget in the middle of the course. The expenses on such education supplies, when cleared through a scholarship may have a huge impact on your overall cost of the study.

Living Expenses: The expenditures covered in this category range from housing rent to food and grocery and transportation. Some students prefer living in flats on a sharing basis over utilising the hostel facilities in order to divide the money spent on accommodation and grocery. Helping yourself with part-time jobs is another option for students who cannot avoid these expenses. There are some international colleges that understand your need for money and allow you to work alongside your studies.

Visa Charges and Travel Cost: Some scholarships are specifically designed to help you with the expenses on transportation via plane, bus, or train. However, there is a limit of maximum money granted in this kind of scholarship.

Insurance: What comes next to this insurance coverage ranges from accidental insurance, health insurance, etc., which is applicable during the time of travelling.

Getting the Money

When is it paid? The rules of awarding scholarship money vary with different organizations. There is no fixed time or method of rewarding the money to the aspirants that each organisation must follow.

How is it paid? The pay-out of the awarded scholarship money is variable, it is payable in both instalments and in lump-sum.

Who is it paid to? In some cases, the whole amount of money is awarded to the students directly while sometimes it is paid to the school where you study.

How is it used? The money is either directly transferred to your bank account or is awarded to you with the name of the kind of scholarship you have been rewarded. In this case, you cannot use the scholarship other than the expenditure for which it is meant to be. Money transferred to your account can be used at your convenience to either clear out your educational loan smoothly carry out the upcoming expenses or even save it for your future.

Please note that scholarships may or may not fall under the category of taxation, which entirely depends upon the rules and regulations followed by the country you have received the scholarship. These policies are explained to the scholarship consumers at the time of grant.

For which things you can’t use a Scholarship?

It is better to ask your scholarship provider about spending money on the following things:

• Recreational trips: Note that the scholarship money cannot be used for personal travel. Personal expenses like travel are never covered in scholarship money, be it a trip to see family or any other getaway.
• Car payments: Purchasing a car to and from campus is an expense that many students are liable to pay. Unfortunately, this cannot be covered in the scholarship money.

How to Keep Your Scholarships?

Generally, some rules and regulations are applicable for scholarships, such as maintaining a specific required grade point average (GPA). You may also bear the responsibility for repaying the money if you spend the scholarship funds on things where the scholarship rules are not applicable or if you fail to meet the other requirements.

Using the scholarship money is an excellent way to bear your educational expenses. When applied wisely, you may use it to clear out bank loans and save the other charges. To get full information on the kinds of scholarships available for you to study abroad, it is advisable that you take expert advice. The study abroad counsellors know which scholarships can help the aspirants in which region on the global sphere and would definitely be able to help you with the same.