It’s almost spring now, but the next grad school application cycle is looming. Applying to graduate schools can be a highly stressful process. And you as an applicant’s parent naturally want to help them through it, but how can you do so? It’s been decades since you applied, if you applied, and the process is…
Stride Funding: Where Your Education is an Investment and not a Debt [Episode 495]
Find out how you can benefit from Stride Funding [Show Summary] Tess Michaels shares what’s new at Stride Funding, the innovative educational financing company she founded, and reflects on the impact that her Harvard Business School MBA has had on her impressive success today. Interview with Tess Michaels, Founder and CEO of Stride Funding [Show…
How to Compose the Small Components of Large Grant Applications Like the Fulbright
Like many large grants, Fulbright applications require candidates to compose a number of small written components throughout the document. Most people speed through the process of writing these blurbs, fiddling with word combinations within the live application platform to get the character-count just right. But these small clusters of writing should not be an afterthought…
Writing a Confident and Thematically Driven Personal Statement for Fulbright
Like many large grant organizations, the Fulbright Foundation requires applicants to write both a statement of purpose and a personal statement. Regardless of your personal background, a strong personal statement for a large grant application like the Fulbright should always have a clear focus: the content of it should always serve the overarching project proposal…
Writing the Fulbright Statement of Grant Purpose as a Practical Document
During my time at the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center, I worked with several graduate students on the development of large grant proposals like the Fulbright. In that work, I noticed a tendency among humanities and social sciences students to overemphasize the intellectual value of their work in application materials. Repeatedly, I found myself making suggested…
5 Lessons Learned When Winning a Fulbright on the Third Try
It was during my master’s program at the University of Cambridge, that I realized how much I wanted Brazil to be part of my doctoral research. One of the reasons that I returned to UCLA for the PhD, instead of staying at Cambridge, was to engage closely with the campus’ rich resources, faculty, library collections,…
Schwarzman Scholars Application Essay Tips and Deadlines
What is the Schwarzman Scholars Program mission? The Schwarzman Scholars Program is a fully funded 1-year master’s program in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Designed in collaboration with prestigious universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, the program’s mission is to “build a global community of future leaders who will…
Applying to the Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program: Everything You Need to Know [2022 – 2023]
Everything you need to know about the Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program Overview: What is the KHS Program? Who is eligible to apply? Unique application deadlines and procedures KHS Acceptance Rate Application elements: Resume Recommendation letters Institutional letter of endorsement Short answer questions Essay question Video statement What is the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program? The Stanford Knight–Hennessy…
Empowering International Students with the Financing for Grad Ed [Episode 475]
How can an international student pay for grad school in the U.S. or Canadian graduate education? [Show Summary] MPOWER Financing has changed the graduate education financing industry by offering international students loans with no collateral or co-signer requirement. Sasha Ramani, the Associate Director of Corporate Strategy explains how they do this responsibly and shares his…
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans Application Essay Tips
Paul Soros was often overshadowed by his younger brother, financial wizard George Soros, but he was a successful businessman and multi-millionaire in his own right. In contrast to George Soros’s success in the financial industry, Paul Soros made his mark on the world by innovating in the shipping industry, filing patents, and winning several engineering…
How to Write a Great Statement of Purpose [Episode 473]
How to Write a Statement of Purpose That Gets You Accepted [Show Summary] Vanessa Febo is a PhD candidate in English Literature at UCLA and a writing instructor who has guided students to acceptance at top programs at Harvard, Stanford, and USC. In this episode, she shares her expert tips on mastering the writing required…
The Myth of the Fully-Funded PhD: Using Scholarships to Mitigate the Financial Realities of Research Degrees
When you decide to go to graduate school of any kind, you are making a financial decision that will dramatically affect your earning capacity for the duration of the program and throughout your life. While the caliber of school, available mentorship opportunities, and research resources are important factors to consider when making a decision about…
The Personal Statement That Got Me a Large Scholarship to Cambridge
When I submitted my application for the Masters program in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University, I was a bit lost in life. I was what they call a “super-senior” at UCLA, taking my last three General Education requirements during Fall quarter of a fifth year. I had already walked for graduation the June before…
How to Write a Grant Proposal: 6 Tips for Winning the Big Bucks!
Applying for financial grants to fund research, academically-related travel, and other expenses is often part and parcel of the graduate student experience. Especially when working on a PhD, you might find yourself regularly seeking funding for conference attendance, research and travel, or summer language acquisition programs. While the money is out there, competition is at…
Entrepreneurship at HBS: How Stride will Help You Fund Your Future [Episode 341]
Learn about HBS 2+2 from Tess Michaels, entrepreneur and HBS 2+2 student [Show Summary] Stride Funding is an innovative start-up that is revolutionizing student financing with income share arrangements instead of traditional student loans. Today Linda talks to Tess Michaels, founder of Stride Funding, and second-year student at Harvard Business School who joined the class…
A Harvard PhD Student and Admissions Consultant Shares Her Story [Episode 328]
Interview with Rachel Slutsky, Accepted admissions consultant [Show summary] Want to know what makes for stupendous statements of purpose or impressive MBA essays? Our guest, and recent addition to Accepted’s team of consultants, is an expert at both. But, for some of you her main claim to fame may be her status as a Harvard…
Do Scholarship Databases Like Unigo Actually Work?
When I first started teaching students at UCLA how to search effectively for scholarships online, I strongly encouraged students to sign up for Unigo, a profile-based scholarship database. Together, students and I would sit down and discuss strategies for filling out profiles as comprehensively as possible. All too frequently I found myself reminding students to…
A 5-Step Approach to Generating Your Master List of Scholarship Applications
Given the decentralized nature of listings for university-funding opportunities, most of the scholarship searches that you conduct will happen on the internet. Rather than depend on automated databases or mobile apps to conduct these searches for you, I strongly suggest that you take a proactive approach by designing and conducting your own experimental searches online….
STEM Graduate Applicants: Get the Scoop on the NSF and Hertz Fellowships
If you are thinking about putting together an application for a STEM Master’s or PhD program this Fall, you should not miss the opportunity to apply for large grants that will support your research and educational goals. Many of my students at the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center have worked with me throughout their undergraduate degrees,…
7 Habits of Highly Effective Scholarship Seekers
In my four years at the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center (SRC), I must have given my introductory workshop about how to perform effective scholarship searches online to thousands of parents, students, and prospective students. Every time that I picked up the phone, gave campus presentations, or faced someone who had just walked into my office…