I know I don't have that much of money, so I have to look for financial support in order to continue my higher education. I was looking for a scholarship that not only cover the tuition fees, but more importantly the living cost during my study. For the scholarship hunting, I also prepare and arrange my timeline thoroughly. All of this needs my full focus, so now you see why I was barely able to do this when I was working in hectic.
1. LPDP (Aug - Oct 2016)
The documents need to be submitted were mostly the same with the admissions to university, added with several documents such as letters of statement (from LPDP, from public hospital) and template for recommendation letters.
Letters of Statement of Health from Public Hospital
I spent almost IDR 400,000 for the statement letters of health. There were three letters in total, costed vary between 30,000 - 70,000. The most expensive was for laboratory fee, around 200,000. This one phase really tested my patience as for the complicated bureaucracy of public hospital, you know it.
Letter of Statement from Indonesia Police Institution
This is actually quite simple but it needs preceding actions such as letters from RT, RW, a lot of documents copies, photographs, etc, so my suggestion is to start doing it asap.
Those were the easy one. Meanwhile, the hardest three for me were the study plan, essay about contribution for Indonesia, and essay about biggest success. I had several ideas going on in my mind but had not really had the time to elaborate the details.
For the study plan, to be honest I was quite stressed when writing it. It's actually combination of your motivation, the course you're proposing, your proposal of budget, and your post-study plan. I wrote same background motivation and post-study plan as I wrote in personal statement for university admissions. Quite tricky to have it translated to Indonesia. On the other side, the information about the course and budget was pretty easy as it was everywhere on the internet.
For the other two essays, I tried to write them as honestly as I could, but with emphasizing some points of strengths. Tricky. It would be wise decision to ask qualified people to proofread every essay you make.
I tried to submit everything before the deadline. I did send my application on October 7th. The announcement came out on November 6th for the substantial selection, and I got scheduled on November 11th for interview, LGD, and essay on the spot. I was lucky to have them all in one day.
Between announcement and interview, during my time waiting for the day of interview, I tried to read and watch a lot of hot topics, browse a lot of others' experiences, also list down every possible questions.
When I had my interview, I placed all documents in a placeholder so that the examiners could run through it easily. Also, it protects from water and the possibility of falling out of the regular holder.
2. Chevening (Aug - Oct 2016)
I have known Chevening since college and can't wait for the time of me actually applying tbe scholarship and I had subscribed to the newsletter since then, which remind me always about my pursuit of higher education in UK. In 2016, I had been waiting for the application since July when it had not came out yet, and when it was opened on August 8th, I was still busy preparing other documents (meaning I still didn't have the necessary documents to be submitted). By the time I finished my application for LPDP, I started to work on my Chevening admission, that was around October.
This scholarship is also need you to fill out many forms, more than LPDP. But that was convenient for me since I did all the application online, no need of any printed documents. Other thing that differs Chevening from LPDP is that Chevening requires two years working experiences (fortunately, any kind of work, full time or part time, voluntary also counts) and it allows you to choose three universities. I submitted my application on November 4th. Another thing that impressed me was that Chevening regularly reminded me via email to submit my application asap before the deadline, November 8th.
3. University Scholarship (Nov - Dec 2016)
I coincidentally met Kak Ayip when I was going through the LPDP selection. He applied to King Fahad university in Saudi Arabia and I just knew from him that most universities in Saudi Arabia already cover the tuition fee and several facilities such as living cost and airplane ticket. Awe to the some! Since I'm a scholarship hunter, I automatically got interested in this new information I've just got and after some browsing I found out I need to take one more test which is GRE to be able to apply for their post graduate school. Their rank of course is below UK, but still higher than Indonesia, also they cooperate with the best universities such as MIT. Abu Dhabi's Masdar Institute also applies the same system, if we apply for the master program we're automatically applying for the scholarship as well. I checked LPDP website and there's only one university on the BPI list which is King Fahad University, and also one on the Presidential Scholarship list, King Saud University. I have considered some back up plans and this three are also tempting options to be considered, so yeah, I applied for these too.
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Don't forget, whatever it is the scholarship that you're applying, make sure to have wide references from other people, especially from the ones who have gone through the selection process before. If you don't know who is, Google has it all :)
