You are 10 times more likely to get a scholarship if you already have a lot of awards and achievements on your profile. How unfair,😐 I know! It’s like the saying goes;

Money attracts more money, scholarships attract more scholarships.

I’m kidding, there’s no such saying, I just made that up😉. It’s true nevertheless.

I was reviewing a student’s application for a Ph.D. admission (I do this as a side hustle on my other website https://academiccoaching.ml/) and I swear I could have summarized the entire application in one line; “I did my bachelor and masters in electrical engineering”🙄. There was very little room to work with so I had to dig deeper into his course projects to help him stand out. While I was reviewing this application, it suddenly hit me😲, I keep running out of room to list my scholarships, awards, and achievements in all my applications for anything, and that is such an unfair advantage.

💹Past vs. Potential

Scholarship applications and graduate admissions work pretty much the same way. Most recruiters only look at what you have already accomplished in the past, to determine if you will accomplish something worth their time and money. To be honest, it is a strong argument, but accomplishments don’t follow the linear interpolation rules. Looking for “potential” would be the right thing to do but that’s much more difficult. How do you find “potential” in some applicant who has no demonstrated history of accomplishments, who doesn’t have any fancy stars on their CV?

🤵Highlighting your “potential” without “proof” is difficult but not impossible. When I’m shortlisting Ph.D. candidates for my professor, I don’t just look at the number of research papers they have published. I look at their potential for research by reading how much effort did put into their applications and proposals. It can be as simple as a well-formatted text, citing a few good references to show your interest in the subject and your ability to find noteworthy research in the field, preparing your essay in LaTeX. etc. The small things make a big difference when it comes to competing against people with fancy stars.

👩🏼‍🤝‍🧑🏿Being Fair in an Unfair World

I won the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) and the LaCIME 3 minute research competitions last year. This year I’m not participating because I know I have the advantage of previous experience now. I know a little bit more about what the judges look for, I know how other participants present their work. So, I’m not participating this year, instead, I have offered to mentor anyone who is participating and needs help. This is my effort to give others a fair chance. I feel like all of us should be doing that a bit more.

👏What I like about 3MT and other such competitions though, is that they don’t care about your past scholarships and awards. Your performance is judged based only on the three minutes that you spend on stage. The scholarships and awards and competitions that don’t require you to list your past accomplishments are inherently fairer than others.

🏆I Won PTYA Scholarship

I did apply for one scholarship this year though, the one I desperately needed. One of my favorite YouTubers Ali Abdaal offers this online course called Part-Time YouTuber Academy. It costs between 1500 USD to 5000 USD💸. There is no way I could afford that course, but luckily they offer scholarships, so I applied. And I got it. And now I’m constantly thinking about my last blogpost and latest YouTube video where I talked about feeling like an imposter, feeling like I don’t deserve it.

I watched a YouTube video of a guy who got this scholarship last Cohort and then blew it. The only way I can think of to be worthy of this scholarship is by not blowing it I guess. So I’m going to commit to learning as much as I can from this course, doing all the homework, and taking the lessons learned with me moving forward.

❤My Favourite Things

🎬YouTube Video:

This is the best video on the internet explaining neural networks, analogue computations, and the bottlenecks of building modern computers.

📕Book:

I finally finished reading “Show your work” by Austin Kleon and moved on to his book “Keep Going”. There are plenty of great book reviews available on the internet for that, and I mostly agree with them. But if you would like me to review the book, ping me about it anywhere and I’ll share my review.

📝Quote:

There are two this week.

🔍I’m Learning:

I’m learning a lot about making YouTube videos. I actually hired 6 freelancers to edit my videos so that I have more time to learn about making my videos. Let’s see how that goes.

I see that you’ve made it to the end. If you liked this blog post, check out the other stuff I talk about on my YouTube Channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!😉

Cheers!

Sadia