A lot of people asked me about this, so in this post I am sharing with you my experience in getting an Erasmus Mundus scholarship for the SECCLO program.
I graduated my bachelor’s
Hmm that’s pretty much it on this section. I graduated :)
I applied to Australia Awards Scholarship
A few months later, I tried applying for a scholarship. I was not aiming to get the scholarship, but rather to get the experience of applying for scholarships, so that I would get the hang of it. As expected, I did not get the scholarship, I did not even pass the first phase of the selection process.
In this application, I only used my TOEFL ITP certificate which does not exhibit my English proficiency in speaking or writing, unlike TOEFL iBT or IELTS. I am sure that affected my chance of getting the scholarship.
I looked for master’s scholarships not requiring years of experience
I found a few, such as Stipendium Hungaricum, Erasmus Mundus, ETH Zurich’s ESOP.
The admission process for the Hungarian scholarship was too tedious, requiring a lot of paperwork. And the universities are not that top-ranked compared to ETH and Erasmus Mundus’ consortium universities, especially SECCLO’s.
The master’s programmes offered in ETH Zurich I was interested in require GRE General Test which I had not taken and I was just not willing to try. They also asked applicants to write a pre-proposal for the master’s thesis, which made it even more difficult.
And then, Erasmus Mundus was the easiest scholarship admission-wise. Most of the programmes do not involve interviews, the application is solely based on the documents you uploaded.
I looked up the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters catalogue and found SECCLO, EDISS, BDMA, SE4GD. Out of those four programs, I was most interested in SECCLO. The requirements were simple. I just needed to write a motivation letter, provide proof of English proficiency, and ask my bachelor’s lecturers for academic recommendation letters.
I prepared for IELTS test
Since I did not have any recognized proof of English proficiency, I had to take an IELTS test. Before that, I took 2 simulations to see what I was good at and how I could improve my score.
To my surprise, having a TOEFL ITP score of 610 did not guarantee that I would score high on IELTS as well. So I put in the work to achieve the highest score I could get.
When the result came out, I got an overall IELTS score of 7.5, without any band lower than 7.0.
I crafted a motivation letter
It took me more than a month to write a well-crafted motivation letter. I wrote my first version, then asked some SECCLO alumni from Indonesia for some critiques, then I modified my letter according to those feedbacks. You can read how I wrote my motivation letter in another blog post here.
I asked my bachelor’s lecturers for recommendation letters
The deadline was nearing. Eventually they asked me to write drafts and so I did. They signed them and uploaded them into the form.
I applied for SECCLO
I filled in the application form. They required me to type in all the relevant courses I studied in my bachelors and their short descriptions. Luckily, my department has provided those here, so I only needed to copy them into the form (with some formatting).
I waited for the result
Finally, on early March 2022, I got the result while I was in a resting stop on a long journey. I was admitted to the program as a self-funded student, but I was put on the reserve list for the scholarship. I tried to calm down as I still needed to drive for a few more hours.
The next day, I replied to the email, asking when I could receive a confirmation of whether or not I would be promoted to the main list of the scholarship. They said it would be around March 14, the first working day after the deadline for scholarship recipients to confirm their acceptance, which was Friday, March 11.
I kept in touch
It’s never over until it’s over, so the saying goes. I convinced myself that there is still a possibility. Exactly on March 14, I emailed them to ask about my chance of getting the scholarship. They replied on that day, saying there were some minor changes and that they would get back to me.
They got back to me
After sundown on the next day, as I was looking to buy some snacks downtown, I received a notification from my Gmail app. The email went pretty much as follows.
“Dear Fajar,Greetings! I hope you are doing fine. I have good news for you: You are proposed for receiving an Erasmus Mundus Partner Country scholarship to SECCLO programme….”
I was promoted to the main list of the Erasmus Mundus scholarship! I was speechless.
I did not tell anyone that night I got the scholarship. I finally told everyone on the next day. Can you imagine that? Hiding such great news for almost a day? Can you do that?
Lesson to be learned
It’s never over until it’s over. If one day you are in a similar position, try to keep in touch. No matter how far down the reserve list you are, you might be prioritized simply because you express genuine interest. It’s not a guarantee, though.
Thank you! I hope you gain something after reading :)