The Trigger: Chevening Awards
From a goal to reality: let's delve into your gateway to not only a degree, but a lovely global network and more!
I decided that my first posts should be related to Chevening Awards as an appreciation to what triggered the idea behind creating this blog and to pay back to the community through a series of walkthroughs and detailed instructions on how to make an outstanding application and be part of a global long-life network.
This was supposed to start 2 years earlier lol. The plan was to start sharing tech and cyber security-related topics as well as stuff related to the UK and Chevening, but I really couldn’t. Mo, what happened then? REALITY hit! A lot happened there, starting from the culture shock I thought I will not go through to study workload and social activities I needed to catch. But hey! Better late than never, huh?
This article talks about Chevening itself, and there will be individual posts on each part of the application (i.e., the 4 essays, maybe more).
First and foremost, don’t apply to a scholarship that you can’t pronounce its name correctly. No, I am serious -_-. Chevening is pronounced as Ch + the word “evening“. Forget about any other pronunciation you know because it pisses me off. Also, this scholarship is not for fun or prestige, or just to say I want to study abroad! It is for people who know what they want, who are aware of their country-related issues related to what they want to study and have a clear plan to solve them.
Now back to work. Let’s first start with the ordinary formal and boring side of what Chevening is. It’s is the UK government’s international scholarships and fellowships program, funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and partner organizations. Wait, I didn’t like it this way, let’s make it bullet points instead:
It is a scholarship where you get the opportunity to study a master’s degree in the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland).
If you are not good at English, like really not good, then do not apply! Or work on your language skills first.
It is just a one-year full-time degree, so do not look for more. It starts from Sep/Oct each year to Sep/Oct of the following year.
The number of total selected scholars is not fixed, but I’d say it ranges from 1,300 to 1,500, something like this.
Per country seats? It depends on the population, funding, how developed the country is, and maybe more. For example, you may see 1-2 Canadians only, while 40 from Pakistan. Just apply and do not pay attention to this, really.
Applications open each year around August/September until early November.
The whole process takes until June when the last results get announced. It is a lot and requires time and efforts in addition to your job and other things so if you are not willing to give it what it takes, then quit.
Applying for the scholarship is different from applying to universities. You should select 3 universities to put in your Chevening application then apply and get offers, which is a separate process (I will explain this later here).
Should we make it a bit more fun? What is Chevening? In a nutshell, Chevening is a tragic romance, believe me.
If you win an award, you get a student visa for like 16 months, which means you can stay in the UK for up to 4 months after you finish your studies. Okay, what is the point here? You fall in love with everything for 12-16 months, then you dump each other after you go back to your country. First, it starts with the culture shock. Folks, it took me 2-3 days to find some pots to buy so I can cook! Then you get hit by the deadlines and the workload, and being a lone potato without your friends or family.
The beauty lies within how things get progressed, embracing challenges, and how things get better with time. Throughout these tough times, you meet people, be it in your class, accommodation, or somewhere else. You find it comforting talking to people who share the same struggle, you talk to your classmates after the danger alert kicks in of how the hell are we going to do the first coursework or assignment? And with time, you feel you are changing, turning to a mentally stronger person and you figure out your routine such as when to study, when to hangout, how to cook, manage finances, etc.
Chevening is a journey of growth. There are multiple learning factors that extend beyond academic and professional learning. With Chevening, you do not learn from your degree only, but you also learn from people, your experience, the challenges you go through, and once again, the people you meet, your friends, how they add new perspectives and how the exposure to new cultures can be beneficial. Believe it or not, depending on what you go through, but your degree might be the least factor among those!
Why a tragic romance? Because even though you leave as a refurbished, more powerful person, you part ways with a city that you shared moments of happiness and sorrow with, a land you fell in love with its charming nature, friends you will hold in your heart for good. Nothing would prevent you from experiencing these emotions but being aware of such facts beforehand would help make them more bearable.
One last thing that is worth mentioning is that in the UK, there is almost something for everyone. By this I mean there is a lot of activities you can do. I enjoyed going to concerts, visiting different cities, going out for walks, and much more. But most importantly, at least for me, conferences! I went to 5 or 6 conferences in IT and Cyber Security which were very helpful. You meet like-minded people, experts you can connect with or have an advice from, and stay up to date with what’s currently going on in your field. I even went to a masterclass on how brains and memory work, which I don’t remember anything from lol.
Enough about this because I got emotional and let’s jump into the requirements.
What is needed to apply?
All the requirements are clear and mentioned in Chevening’s website. Don’t be lazy and count entirely on this post or others, do some research! To not make it too long, I will highlight some important points below:
Full-time, part-time, private sector, public sector, and voluntary work are all inclusive in the 2,800-hour work experience requirement.
All fees are covered by the scholarship. For the tuition fees, all degrees are covered except there is a fee cap for MBAs.
You need to satisfy all the eligibility criteria or else you’ll be eliminated quite early.
The 4 essays are the core of your application. You need to write them using your own words, without having someone writing them on your behalf or using AI. They must be professional, authentic, and reflect your real experience as you need to provide examples on some occasions. All your essays need to make sense together and demonstrate a clear plan.
You need to provide reference letters and have them ready in case you get invited for an interview, then you have to upload them.
The process works by first sifting applications against eligibility criteria, then your essays will be read and a longlist is created which will be delivered to the British embassy/consulate in your home country who will make a shortlist out of it of the candidates who are invited for an interview.
Invitations email are sent in February in waves, with rejections emails usually starting first followed by acceptance and rejections too.
Interviews take place around March and April. It differs between countries. Each interview takes between 15 minutes to an hour based on my experience. You get assessed on the same core points of your essays.
Each candidate gets a score on each question they are asked. We now have a descending list of candidates from the highest to the lowest. Let’s say Chevening decided to give country X 15 seats, then the highest 15 get accepted.
Final results get announced in June. You either get accepted (woohoo you are going to the UK!), or put in a wait list (this is actually worse than rejection, you need to wait in case further seats or funding become available so the highest in the reserve list get qualified, either one or two, idk, it depends), or someone wakes you up from your dream to tell you that you are rejected, go back to your life.
I do not believe in what they say about the criteria of allocating seats based on specialties or sex, your qualifications speak for you, so just do your best. However, take into consideration what the UK is doing in your country and what your country actually needs to improve.
How can you write powerful essays that make sense and are connected together? This will be explained individually in separate articles, in details, and with examples.
Finally, let’s talk about universities:
In your Chevening application, you need to provide 3 university choices. Let’s say you want to study Marketing. You research universities in the UK who offer degrees in Marketing through whichever platform you prefer; I used Chevening’s Find a Course page. The order of your choices is not a thing. But do put your most preferred one first because you will talk about it more I’d say. But later, you can study in any of them without explaining why.
Remember, the idea behind Chevening is that you have a plan that your country would benefit from. You identify issues related to Marketing in your country that you want to solve through applying what you learn from your degree in the UK. Therefore, choose 3 Marketing-related courses in 3 different universities.
In your Study in the UK essay, you need to talk about what pushed you to apply, why you want to study Marketing in specific, why the UK, which universities did you choose and why. Then in your Career Plan essay, you talk about the goals you want to achieve in order to solve the issues you identified in your Study in the UK essay.
With that being said, choose wisely. Choose what would help you to learn and solve the problem. Look at the course structure and the modules, eligibility criteria and entry requirements, academic staff, research, how popular your university is in Marketing, and perhaps find alumni over LinkedIn and talk to them. Do not mind the ranking, look deeper.
Important: Chevening does not care about your GPA actually, but universities do, put than in mind. Apply for highly-ranked universities, try, but if you do not have a high GPA, then there is a high chance of rejection. Also, do not apply for a university that has high English language requirement that you can not meet!
You should start applying for universities once you are done with your Chevening application. Work in parallel. Apply for universities outside your 3 choices too because if you get shortlisted for an interview, you can make a change to your choices. If you eventually get the scholarship, then a program officer will be in touch with you asking you to send your offer. If you do not send the offer by the specified deadline, then your award will be withdrawn.
You made it to the end of this! I know it was a lot, so congrats!
A lot will be also covered after the coming articles get posted: Leadership and Networking, Study in the UK, Career Plan, and the STAR and SMART approaches.
I tried to explain the scholarship differently in a way that I do not think is covered elsewhere. However, do read a lot online in Chevening’s website, other people like me, and YouTube. Make you research, understand as much as you can, then start the battle.
Last but not least, this is a tough battle, do not go through it if you are not willing to do whatever it takes!
Now, I’ll leave you with my two favorite UK moments: my trip to Lake District, and a shot taken right after my graduation:
