How to secure a scholarship admission to a Canadian university

UNIZIK RADIOGRAPHY GRADUATES

The aim of this post is to give detailed step by step procedures you should follow to secure a scholarship in Canadian universities for graduate programs at master’s level and PhD. Needless to say that when you secure a full scholarship admission in a foreign university, the chances you will be given the visa is 95 percent. They rarely deny or delay scholars .

Let’s get started

Graduate programs are basically of two types in Canada. The first being thesis or research based admission and the second project route admission. While thesis based is meant for researchers and people who would not mind a PhD in the near future, project based is mainly suited for students who would prefer to work in the industry hence most project based programs have a coop or work term component…don’t be confused na just IT…but paid IT and it usually runs for 4 months.

Due to the nature of thesis based master’s degree, it is usually more rigorous and highly competitive you know how money matter dey always be now hahahha and as a result, you are given a full scholarship from basically three sources. The first is School of graduate studies; the second is your home department while the third is from Research assistant role or teaching assistant role.

The accumulation of these funds runs in thousands of dollars paid to you per annum. They deduct your tuition and other expenses and pay you the rest on a bi-weekly basis. It is worthy of mention to state explicitly that once you apply for a thesis route masters degree, you need not apply for any other scholarship separately. It comes together like bread and butter in most cases hahahaha. And when you are admitted and you get funding from an external source, they stop the one that comes with your admission hahahahaha you wan hammer ontop scholarship money abi? .

Now the big question is how do I qualify and/or what are the basic requirements. Well for the most part, you need a CGPA of nothing less than a 75 percent in your undergraduate. This is equivalent to a 3.5 on a 5.0 scale. Depending on your choice of program, you may need Gmat or GRE and probably IELTS too as part of supporting documents. As earlier stated the competition is always very fierce. My supervisor told me over 700 applicants submitted while just 15 were chosen. Hence you need to be that irresistible and promising young scholar.

This is where creating a scholarly profile comes in. It is not a requirement most times but I recommend including your scholarly publications in your application and certificates of membership of academic bodies. If you are still an undergraduate, hope still dey. Join IEEE, AIESEC and all these student organizations. And try write some articles also. I did it so you can do it too. Just research and stop being lazy like me hahahha. Moreover, you will need to write a clear and concise statement of purpose clearly stating your research interest and your academic feats. All these writings no be big deal. They are just a perfect avenue to sell yourself to the review panel and make them pee in their pants hahahahhaa thereby creating that enthusiasm to sign you. All these would further strengthen your case and make your application more competitive. As a matter of fact I included all these when I was applying even certificates of presentations and participations in academic conferences in Nigeria.

One of the hurdles in securing a thesis admission is getting a supervisor. That can be very frustrating as I went through the same too. So my advice here is draft a very unique proposal. Not just the normal template we see around. Be creative an instance when I was writing mine I wrote something likes “Sir I read your publications titled database blab blab la bla. While it is educative and interesting if adopted in today’s world of computing, I would like to specifically state that combining your methodology with so so so approach could create a more efficient database system…..I made logical suggestions to one of his works while indirectly critiquing others hahahaha try this with a naija professor at your peril hahahahaha. So write a catchy proposal. Because even if you have a first class, and you can’t get a supervisor, you won’t be admitted. Though some universities do merge student automatically the supervisor of aligning interest but most of them won’t do that.

Above all, pray for favour and goodluck because sometimes the race is not to the swift hahahahaha. Before I return my pen into basket of love, I wish you a prosperous 2016 in advance.

Credit:Jengbetiele