Tips and Tricks: Chevening Scholarship

Question: Can you tell us briefly what is Chevening Scholarship and firstly introduce yourself. They know your bio. We shared your bio but can you tell briefly where you come from, what’s your vision, what do you want to do in your life, what’s Chevening, and how did Chevening come into your life.

Answer: Okay. Most of you might pronounce Boua-FA. That actually is Boua-PA from Lao pronunciation. I consider myself as a human rights advocate for most at-risk population or community. My background actually started from HIV, it’s prevention among young people mostly. In 2015, I decided to upgrade my academic expertise so I decided to apply for Chevening Scholarship. Chevening is the scholarship provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - the UK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They cooperate with their embassies and hire scholars all around the world. It’s more like an international development scheme to all their partners (UK Embassies around the world).

Question: I know that you did undergraduate studies in the US, the opportunity that had offered you an international experience. How did your experience in the US shaped your path in life, your interest, your decision to come to the UK?

Answer: In the USA, as an undergraduate student, I had a great introduction to various social projects. That gave an initial idea and guidance about what I wanted to do in my life. Then further all network that I have built in the USA, helped me to start working on various social projects in my country Laos and then further build my network there. My undergraduate study experience in the USA was the best introduction for my Chevening experience and Master’s experience in the UK.

Question: Something very important here. Anan did not manage to get selected for the Chevening scholarship for the first time he applied. After first and second rejection, he did not want to give up. He used all the lessons learnt from two previous rejections and got selected the third time he applied in 2015.

Answer: That’s right! I got the Chevening Scholarship the 3rd time I applied. The reason of two first rejections has lost of factors. Some of those are the fact that the UK was offering very limited number of scholarship spots for my country and the students that got selected always had better grades from their undergraduate studies. But as you said, I just did not want to give up and I decided to keep applying with improved application until they eventually select me.

Question: So the grades are very important criterion for the Chevening scholarship?

Answer:Yes, but fortunately the grades are not the only one criterion. Good grades are only one selection criterion and for that reason I wanted to encourage students who do not have perfect grades to apply if they demonstrate other criterion that we will be discussing here.

Question: Great, let’s discuss one by one selection criterion so that all applicants can work on each one of those separately. The first selection criterion is leadership potential. One of the main reasons why the UK Government is investing in students from all over the world is the expectation that their experience, knowledge and contacts acquired during their time in the UK combined with their leadership potential will help them to improve their countries.

Answer: That is right! I think leadership potential paired with the field of studies are two extremely important selection criteria for the Chevening scholarship. For that reason, I always advise prospective students two key things.

Chevening not only supports individuals to develop professionally and academically enabling them to assist with their own country’s development, it also contributes to a range of the UK’s national security, business, education, economic and cultural objectives by:

As with all applications to various programmes, it’s key to demonstrate how you as an individual can contribute to all those programmes’ specific goals so that you are not one another applicants who is trying to get a’free ride’’. Secondly, the Chevening welcomes applicants from all fields of study. However, your chances will be much bigger if you align your course choices with what the UK is currently doing in your country. For more information, please visit this page. If you decide to take this approach make sure you are as much specific as possible when explaining how concrete field of studies in the UK and more concrete courses will help you to make your country better (aligned with the projects that the UK is already doing in your country). By having the above criterion in mind along with the UK Government’s actions in your country, you can choose your desired UK Universities as well as write four required application essays. In all of them, I highly advise you to be as much specific as possible (mention concrete examples from your previous experiences, measurabe impacts that you had on other people, measurable and concrete future plans...) and everything paired with your concrete studies and potential experiences in the UK.

Question:Because this application criterion of leadership potential is so important, I wanted to dig deeper into that one. Can you please explain how an applicant can demonstrate leadership potential and how did you demonstrate that you are a leader in your country, and that you will help your country or certain group of people?

Answer: As I said earilier, Chevening judges value highly what grades you had during your undergraduate studies but they don’t just look at how many As you get or how many Bs you get. You have to do and get something nice but leadership potential does count. I think it's very crucial to keep in mind because the main objective of a scholarship is one: to help you achieve where you want to go in order to come back (to your home country) and contribute what you have studied and make it happen. So it’s not just your leadership potential but you have to know exactly what you want to do like oh I have done that, I've been there, I used to do that work, I helped so many, I became that.... If they ask about your future plans and you still don't know, there's a high chance that you won’t get selected. Or they will definitely be reluctant to support you. So for example, my situation or my case. Before I applied, you know I started the human rights initiative in Laos with the American government in 2012. Before I went to America in 2009, I had long years of work experience in HIV & AIDS and reproductive health among young people and in general in area of youth empowerment. So from 2005 and 2015 I think it's 10 years of experience - paid and unpaid. And I have created some impact. I don't know if it’s impactful enough. But yeah, it was impactful to somebody’s life and some communities. I demonstrated this in my Chevening application by explaining them my work, impacted people, projects and partnerships that I have established. In addition to that, I connected my previous professional and academic experience to my future career plans and clearly showed how the Chevening scholarship will help me reach those goals.

Concretely, I explained to them that after I come back from my studies in the UK, I would be establishing my own non-profit organization focusing on the similar work that I used to do: human rights into action. Because in Laos, we can't just talk about work on human rights solely but you have to do something. You know, subtle. So it is what I told them and yes they liked it.

Question: So everything mentioned but it has to be in a total of two years. So this is important. As far as I know, they are quite strict in this. If you don’t have two years of experience, you’re not really eligible, right?

Answer: Yeah. Like you said, it is extremely important step that you have to keep in mind. Of course, if you have a full-time experience that’s wonderful. But if not, if you’re a student they will still want to see the experience that you have had in the past. It can be a big whole extra-curricular activity or something like that or voluntary work. But I think it has to be a legit organization. For example, if you have volunteer work experience with some UN agencies or some local NGOs and do something impactful to society, that is great as well.

Question: We have already touched the topic of grades or GPA. So what is, you believe, like the minimum mark? Because we were reading about Chevening. They didn’t mention that. They didn’t say you have to have over three GPA. Do you have to have (GPA of 3 or above) or you can even have 2? Do you know some people who were like exceptional in career part but they were not that good in marks?

Answer: That is a good observation you had. I think you should discuss it with the University. Because Chevening and the British Embassy do not interfere, they do not support you on the selection of university. You will contact the university yourself. You'll be dealing with a bunch of departments - your department and international admissions. So it depends on the university you choose. If you go to the lower ranking, maybe that's preferred. For a second-class degree, it is accepted. Third- class is accepted. But if you apply to a high ranking, of course, they prefer to get a first class grades only. If you have a third class, there's a high chance that you will be rejected. And then you have to come up with three universities that you like the most - to be accepted either one of under three or if you get all three, you should choose the one which is your first choice.

As for application to Universities, it’s important to start your application as soon as possible because some Universities take a lot of time to take decision. There are some universities that take a really long time - up to four months. For example, Goldsmiths (Goldsmiths, University of London). I even had an interview first with the university. Some universities? They don’t have interviews. They just say yes or no. But in Goldsmiths, I applied then I had an interview and then in one month or two, I heard from them.

The first step would be to search for approved University programs here. Then you should check the application process to each one of those Universities and submit your application as soon as possible.

Question: Did you experience a cultural shock when you landed in the UK?

Answer: The first few months yes. But now, I am like okay. Because the first time you arrive, you want to see everything. That’s up to three to six months. If you have a lot of homework, books to read, do lots of assignments, you automatically settle. (laughs)

Question: This is the perfect example of the next part. It’s about the experience in the UK. So how was your experience? Do you usually have culture shock? How was your experience both academically and socially? What did you gain out of this experience? What did you learn about yourself? In general, what did you learn about the world? Can you tell us about it?

Answer: I’ll start with the academic experience. My academic experience is wonderful for me because got the opportunity to study my passion and fields. Because my background started from development work but recently, human rights. So I just found something that I have been dreaming of for many years. Development and human rights, it is a wonderful package. I had a wonderful time at Goldsmiths. My professors, my supervisor are very helpful. Then, culture shock. Yes. I am a bit culture shocked because America and the UK, of course, share so many similarities. But in the UK, English people are quite different. They're what you call reserved. They don't talk to you like Americans like, ‘Hey, How’s it going? What’s up?’. Even when you walk on the streets and they don’t know you but they’re like, ‘Oh hi!’. That’s it. Even if they don’t care about having long conversation with you but you feel okay; you feel at home. Sometimes these people just smile without even talking to you. But in the UK, it’s completely different. Nobody is going to say hello to you, even if their faces looked like they are angry at you. But after three months, four months, I started to adapt to the local environment. But even among themselves, they don’t really talk much. You know? They go in groups, with their own groups and stuff. So that was the culture shock. Also, they’re extremely polite. Their politeness is extinct. It is something that really amazed me - how polite they are. For personal, it’s a wonderful city. Apart from working hard or studying hard, you also...especially London. London has a variety...it matches your preferences. There are so many people here, so many things to do. I think this is a great city that you can drain out all your stress and enjoy what London has to offer. And again, I forgot to mention about the public lectures. I took a lot of advantages from that. In London, there are a lot of public lectures going on within a day. Maybe 10 lectures a day.