Offers application free week in October every year: Get your materials ready and visit the university’s graduate school website in October for guidelines – They usually display the info boldly on their site
32. University of Texas Health San Antonio Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, USA
33. University of Texas at San Antonio, Neuroscience PhD Program, USA
NB: Application fee will be waived if you submit your application by November 1, 2023.
34. University of Nebraska, USA
(All undergraduate programs)
NB: The application fee waiver does not apply to international students.
International students may use the waiver code: LOPER
35. University of Maryland Global Campus, USA
NB: Application fee will be waived if you submit your application on or before August 31
36. University of Notre Dame, USA
Waiver is granted on the basis of financial hardship or academic excellence
Send a request to gradapp@nd.edu stating why you need a waiver
37. University of Dayton
(All programs)
37. University of Colorado Boulder Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences, USA
NB: They are offering waivers to a select few international students who do not meet the graduate school waiver requirements
38. University of Colorado Boulder Department of Computer Science, USA
NB: Limited waivers will be offered to exceptional international students from countries experiencing economic hardships OR facing financial sanctions imposed by the US
39. University of Colorado Boulder College of Engineering & Applied Science
For US citizens and permanent residents
40. According to the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE), these 16 universities in the state of Colorado are waiving application fees – check if you are eligible
41 to 55 and contained in the PDF uploaded by CDHE.
NOTE: I did my best to verify this information on the respective websites. However, make your own findings as well.graduate.ua.edu/prospective-st…
Credits to @olumuyiwaayo and @temabef and the entire Academic Twitter for inspiring this list.
For more study-abroad opportunities, follow my page (@UgochukwuCFR).
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force a refresh
SOMETHING ABOUT RECOMMENDATION LETTERS THAT ISN'T TALKED ABOUT YET WIELDS STRONG INFLUENCE ON SCHOLARSHIP OR GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICATIONS
When sending a request to someone to submit a recommendation letter for your scholarship or graduate school application, PLEASE, waive your right to view or review the recommendation.
The strongest recommendation is the one written confidentially (without you seeing it).
If you don't waive this right, the perception is that you'll see the content of the recommendation, which encourages social desirability bias on the side of the recommender.
Ultimately, such recommendation letters will affect the admissions committee's decision.
For instance, if you ask me to write a recommendation letter for you and you choose to see it, it will affect what I'll write. Naturally, I'd like to over-amplify your good side and downplay your weaknesses so you don't see me as a "bad" person.
Here's a sample of HOW TO REQUEST FOR APPLICATION FEE WAIVER on the basis of financial need (economic hardship).
I just stumbled on the application fee waiver request emails I sent to program coordinators and graduate school directors when I was applying for admission in the U.S., and decided to share with you all.
REPOST, tag friends, and bookmark for future reference🔁📌
Let’s start with Application Fee Waiver Request Tips
✅ Check the application fee waiver policy to ensure you meet the waiver requirement(s) before sending emails (especially to graduate school coordinators).
✅ When a university states that waivers are given to economically disadvantaged students, that's a green light, shoot that email.
✅ If the grad school's waiver policy says nothing about giving waiver on basis of financial need, resort to your program director or coordinator.
✅ Even when a university website says NO APPLICATION FEE WAIVER, consider requesting for a waiver from your program director or coordinator.
✅ Don't be discouraged because a university website says there’s NO application fee waiver for int'l students. Sometimes, departments have waivers, but you wouldn't know until you ask.
For instance, my university doesn't offer app fee waiver, but my department waived my app fee. However, they do this at their own disposal.
✅ You could also get an application fee waiver by attending virtual open house events organized by universities and different programs. I utilized this strategy a lot.
Disadvantage of application fee waivers:
Getting application fee waivers is good, but here's one disadvantage:
Availability of application fee waiver increases the number of applications by hundreds if not thousands, which then makes the admission pool very competitive and decreases an applicant's chances of getting admission and funding.
Save money and pay for some application fees if you can.
Make some SACRIFICES for your personal development – it pays!
Sample of a well-written, award-winning Statement of Purpose (SoP) that won Rishabh Jain full-ride PhD scholarships at MIT and UPenn:
The writer, Rishabh Jain, received fully-funded Ph.D. offers from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and MIT (an American university that has ranked as the Best University in the World for many years).
🔁Kindly RETWEET: A scholarship and graduate school applicant on your timeline needs this.
Let's discuss the strengths of this SoP to see what made it outstanding, using a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis.
Although an SoP is NOT the only admission requirement, it is an avenue for an applicant to market themselves to the professors on an admissions committee and convince them on why they should be admitted and funded.
1️⃣Paragraph 1: He identifies a significant and relevant problem that needs to be solved. He then ties this to WHY he wants to pursue a PhD in Materials Science and lets the admissions committee know WHY he's applying to MIT of all universities. He shot three birds with one stone (one paragraph).
LIST OF 132 AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES THAT HAVE WAIVED TOEFL/IELTS FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS💥
✅Apply to these universities without writing TOEFL/IELTS exam
✅Verified and confirmed: I’ve included their official websites to confirm these waivers
✅You qualify if English is your country’s official language
✅If your country is on their TOEFL exempt list
✅If your (un)official transcript was prepared in English
✅If your previous education was in English
Retweet, someone on your timeline may need this 🔁
Take Note of the FOLLOWING:
✅ A university may waive but your program may insist you submit. Be sure to double-check with your program.
✅ Be sure they offer funding for int’l students
✅ Confirm if it’ll affect your chances of getting funding (scholarship)
✅ Getting a waiver is good, but if you can afford it, write English test to boost your chances. I got 6 fully-funded offers from 5 US universities without TOEFL/IELTS, you too can.
✅ Some universities stated these waivers on their undergraduate webpage but the waiver also applies to their (post)graduate programs.
1. Washington State University
2. Texas A&M University
3. University of Texas at Austin
4. American University (DC)
5. University of Iowa
6. University of Maryland requirements
7. Dartmouth (Ivy League)
– Submit InitialView (free tool of used to showcase communication skills)
1️⃣Identification of problem and solution: In the first paragraph, she identified a problem and wrapped her area of interest around "finding the solution" to that problem.
A 15-STEP-GUIDE ON HOW TO DISCOVER, APPLY, AND WIN MULTIPLE SCHOLARSHIPS ABROAD👇
Someone on your timeline is in search of scholarship opportunities and this thread may be all they need to be in their dream country by this time next year.
THREAD: Open, Like, and Retweet 🔁
1. Use to get a list of Top 100 universities in your preferred study destination (USA, Canada, UK etc).
2. Trim the list by removing the universities that don’t offer your program of interest.
3. Continue downsizing the list using some of the following:
(b) GRE/GMAT and English proficiency requirements - TOEFL/IELTS (are these waived or required?).
- I got 6 fully-funded offers without writing any of these. If you don't have the resources, you may want to focus only on schools that have waived these tests.
(c) Application fee waivers: Focus on universities that are willing to waive your application fee.
- All 6 offers I got came from universities that waived my application fees. The only school where I paid an application fee rejected my application. Hence, nobody should make you think or believe that "inability to pay an application fee is a red flag, a sign of inability to afford graduate school."
- However, if you have the money, pay. The more schools you apply to, the higher your chances of getting a fully-funded scholarship.
(d) Research interest: is there a professor in this university doing your kind of research?
(e) Internal grants and fellowships: Grad school is tough; you need financial support. As an international student, before applying to a university, check and be sure they have several internal research and travel grants that you can compete for and win.
- I recently won a research grant from my university and my program also supported the research with a department-funded grant. That's the kind of academic environment you should look forward to joining.4icu.org
4. Cold Email (Optional): Contact professor(s) whom you’d like to work with. This is a marketing process - sell yourself
- Simply go the your program website and read about the faculty (professors). You can also look them up on Google Scholar to see the nature of their most recent research, which will be a pointer to whether or not your interests align.
- In the coming days, I'll share the cold email that I used during my time with you all.