APPLICATION FEE IN SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION BY MAKULILO JR

The Scholarship application process is very expensive. The entire process requires a lot of resources like financial resources, time, internet access, determination and so forth. You need to take high risk in order to yield positive results.

The application fee is one of the most important parts of application process. If it is indicated in the application process that there is application fee of a certain amount, which always is non-refundable, you need to pay that fee before deadline. Failure to pay application fee, your application will never be considered.

For my personal experiences on matters pertaining to scholarships, scholarship programs in Europe usually do not require application fees. One among many reasons as to why such scholarship programs do not require application fee is that, most of these scholarships are funded by the governments of respective countries, and some funded by independent or rather external organizations/institutes which are not universities. 

Even if you will be applying to a particular university for a certain program, the fund comes from the government mostly. The scholarship programs which do not require the application fees to mention a few are: NUFFIC Scholarship (Netherlands), Quota Scheme Scholarship (Norway), NOMA Scholarship (Norway), DANIDA (Denmark), Chevening Scholarship (Britain), Commonwealth Scholarship (UK), Erasmus Mundus (Europe in general) etc

In the United States, there are scholarships which are funded by the U.S Government, Universities and external organizations. In these government and external organizations funded programs, there is no application fee. 

The scholarship programs include The Fulbright Scholarship (government), Hulbert Humphrey Fellowship (government), Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship (Rotary International), and Ford Foundation etc. For the scholarships and/or assistantships which are funded by the university or department, most of these require applicant first to secure unconditional admission offer followed by scholarship consideration.

It should be noted that, almost all universities in the United States charge a nonrefundable application fee that covers the cost of paperwork and application processing. Since the U.S uses US Dollar (USD), the application must be paid in U.S dollar payable in either cashier’s check drawn on a U.S bank or by international money order. 

But there are sometimes direct online Debit/Credit Card payments. This credit/debit payment is only used if instructed in online application. Most cards accepted are VISA and MASTER CARDS.

There is no fixed amount for the application fee. Each university is having its own arrangements. There are universities where the application fee for international students varies from U.S Citizens. In general, the application fee ranges between $40 to 100$ and should be paid before the deadline.

Personal Advice

In order to apply and get full scholarship, I kindly advise you to apply to more than 25 scholarship programs. There is extensive scholarship competition, and there are thousands of people are applying for the same. For that case, be strategic when applying with regard to your financial resources.

 If you do not have enough money for the application fee, apply many universities in Europe where no application fee. And when you apply in the United States, make sure you apply more for those which do not require the application fee first then others which need application fee.

 In that way, you will manager to apply many scholarship programs and you will be in a position to get more than one opportunity and choose the best scholarship on the basis of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effective.