Congratulations on receiving a nomination from your Nominating agency! This is the first step towards a Commonwealth scholarship.
Every year the CSC invites Nominating agencies to recommend candidates to the Commission for consideration of a Master’s or PhD Scholarship. A nomination is not guarantee of a scholarship, and the Commission always makes the final decision on who is awarded a scholarship.
Your nominating agency have done all the can in supporting applicants for a scholarship and cannot influence the decision any further. Here we breakdown what happens next:
1. Eligibility Checks
All nominated applications are checked by the secretariat for eligibility. As well as meeting basic eligibility, all applications must be complete which means including references and all transcripts and for PhD only, a supporting statement from a proposed supervisor in the UK.
Eligibility for other CSC programmes vary, please check individual programme pages for more information.
2. Advisor reviews
Eligible applications are divided between a panel of Academic Advisors who play a critical role in reviewing applications and providing advice to the Commission on an applicant’s proposed plan of study and development impact.
3. Selection panels
Following review from advisors, applications are shared with individual commissioners who review each application and take into account an advisors review as well as their own knowledge and expertise to score applications in line with Commonwealth Selection Criteria.
All applications are reviewed by at least two Commissioners before a selection meeting where final review and decisions are made.
The Commission can only select as many scholars are funding will allow and many high-quality applicants are not offered awards each year. Try to not be too disheartened if you are not selected this year; consider the advice available and come back stronger next time!
4. Application results
Once the selection panel has made the final decision, all applicants are informed of the outcome of their applications. This usually happens from mid-June onwards.
Conditionally selected scholars must provide any outstanding documentation before their can finally be confirmed as a Commonwealth Scholar.
Nominating agencies will be informed of the outcome of their nominations at the same time as applicants.
Commonwealth scholarships are highly competitive and many excellent applicants will miss out on a scholarship each year. Do not let this discourage you from re-applying in future years. Many scholars are successful second, third or even fourth time of applying!
Remember you CSC offers a number of different scholarship programmes so do consider those too.
If you are lucky enough to be offered a Commonwealth Scholarship; we can’t wait to welcome you to the UK!
