One of the easiest, safest and fastest ways to get a way out of Nigeria, which unfortunately is the motivation of many, is to seek scholarship positions especially for postgraduate studies outside the shores of the country. People have been exploring it and surely it pays. But in the midst of these euphoria for greener pastures, salient information is missed when such offers are shared or seen.
In a first-hand scenario, I witnessed a sort of “under-information” when scholarship opportunities were shared on a platform I belong to about my present school and I feel the need to orientate scholarship applicants on needed information to seek when applying to schools across the globe. For those who do not have a referral, a brother, a colleague or friend in the school or area that the application is being made, here are some information you need to seek, using my own school scenario as a case study which I believe might apply to many others.
- Tuition Waivers
Most highly coveted scholarships especially in America, Europe, Middle East and some other parts of Asia are fully funded. This means that the tuition fees, living expenses, insurance, travel tickets and others are taken care of by the scholarship provider. In this case, all the student had to do is get selected and he is on an easy ride till he finishes. In the case of tuition waiver-based scholarships, the situation is different. In this case study, as soon as I received the notification on the scholarship WhatsApp group and I saw that it was our school, I felt a sense of pride and I am like, let me go and check it out. On getting to the page, I noticed what was familiar already which was “100% tuition Fee”. That alone sounds enticing for someone who is ready to “japa” but that is not the full story. My school runs a semester-based tuition waiver system, which means, if you get 100% tuition waiver this semester, you are not sure you would get same the coming semester.
In most cases, the scholarship slots are distributed among departments and it is the availability of these slots that determine how many students in each department gets how much waiver. Well, I believed the scholarship website people do not know this enough to even add it to the info on their website or better still, it is unrealistic for them to scour through hundred of scholarship positions they have to post every day. This added information is however provided on the school website, albeit, if you do not check the information well, or have someone to tell you, you might miss that little but important detail.
- Stipends
Now, you have applied to the school, but you are not sure how you are going to survive without living expenses covered. Please, do not let the naija in you push you to not making arrangements for yourself. Do not count on the fact that you can get there and start hustling. You might end up facing hell. Again, this is for those who do not have leads to put them through in the school or country they are applying to. In the tuition waiver-based scholarships, some schools make arrangements for their students to earn some stipends. In fact, they give them much working hours that can sustain them for the time being. It might be in the form of a teacher assistant (TA) or research assistant (RA).
However, in some cases, the school also expects some form of commitments from the benefits they are giving thus putting some strains on the freedom they might likely give to the scholarship recipients.
In some cases where the school does not make working arrangements, there might be the constraint of the student VISAs not being accepted for work and or that the student cannot get the work in and of itself outside the school. To add to this trouble, the work load on the student and the expectation to excel for the coming semester eventually affects the general productivity of the student which then cascades into underperformance. This is if the issue of language barriers are not there, which for many is the killing point and you would be left to do nothing but menial labour works that you can’t even imagine doing back in Nigeria. These are scenarios you have to sort out before embarking on that immigration plans.
- Family Invitation
This is a problem for married students. Apart from Canada, America or UK and Europe in general (probably not all), as a student, you might not have the luxury to invite your family over during your study. Since the initial intention of most people is to “japa”, the inability to bring your family along might not be in the long run, the needed morale booster for your sojourn abroad, at least for someone who is guided by some moral/religious principles.
For those that have passed through that stage, it is not an easy feat to pull through. If the country you are going to does not allow you bringing your family, kindly have that at the back of your mind and prepare yourself for it and work towards an alternative. Failure to be armed with this information would dampen your spirited efforts to make yourself proud and your nation at large.
May God heal our country!
Ashraf Akintola, currently a PhD candidate in Biomedical Convergence Science and Technology in the Kyungpook National University, Daegu South Korea.
Contact: ashakintola@gmail.com.
