AriseScholar Foundation

Hi Family!

Are you ready now? Are your documents ready? Okay, I have a good news for you now.

Free application week at the University of Alabama, USA from October 18th to 22nd October. All successful applications within this period are automatically exempted from paying application fees. Please save that ~1000 ghc application fee by snatching this rare opportunity.

A link to their admissions page is provided below.

https://www.ua.edu/admissions

Hi Family!

Please the attached file is a tentative/template of a good academic CV we designed for graduate school application. This is to serve as a guide for you to design your own CV. Please read carefully the post on "Designing a winnable CV for MSc/PhD Applications" that I posted earlier and then use this as a guide to design your CV. Feel free to always contact AriseScholar if you have any questions.

Please, don't just read and go to sleep. Get you CV ready because very soon we would be posting a lot of universities with free applications weeks here. What happens if all your documents are not ready? It means you cannot apply, then you will be regretting.

Please like, comment and share to benefit others. Let us not be like Ghanaians, let us be like Nigerians, for together we can win.

We can all be great together!!

Drafting a winnable Academic CV for MSc/Ph.D. Application

Hi Family!

In this episode, we are going to take a look at how to draft an excellent academic CV. What is an Academic CV?
An academic CV is a research-focused CV. I know someone is saying that - but I don’t have any research background and I have never done any research. Relax! By the end of this episode, you will know that you are a researcher.

Step 1: What kind of paper should I use to design my CV?:

Use A4 sheet paper. Normally, people use already-designed templates. You are encouraged to use a template, but make sure to edit it thoroughly to suit what an academic CV should look like. The paper should be plain with no color

Step 2: What are the things I should not include in my CV:

Normally you would find out that most CV templates online include a host of information/data including but not limited to pictures, age, religion, etc. Please, for an academic CV, DO NOT include your picture. DO NOT include your religious affiliation, Do NOT include your race, and DO NOT even include your age. All of this information is not just unnecessary, but could also be used against you. What if the person you are cold-emailing is a racist who doesn’t like to hire certain people or a certain age group?

Step 3: Outline of the CV:

A good academic CV should have 10 separate parts/headings. (1) Name/Address/Contact details (2) Research Interest and Skills (3) Educational History (4)Research Experience (5)Working Experience (6) Leadership/Voluntary Services (7)Honors/Awards/Recognitions (8)Internship/Conferences/Seminars (9)Publications (10) Referees. We are going to discuss each of these steps in detail in the next few sections.

Step 3-(1): Name/Address/Contact Details:

This is normally the first page of the CV and must start with your full name in bold letters. Right beneath your full name comes your address/professional affiliation and your contacts such as emails, cell phone numbers, and professional links such as LinkedIn and Twitter handles, Google Scholar sites, research gate profile, Academia, etc. Include hyperlinks to external profiles like the LinkedIn and Twitter handles, Google Scholar site, Research Gate profile, and Academia page or even GitHub. This makes it very easy for the professor to quickly visit those sites and learn more about you even before going through your CV.

See the template in the next post!

Step 3 (2): Research Interest &Skills.

This is the most important part of your CV. Please avoid writing in paragraphs and generic language instead use bullet points. Most often some people write a long single paragraph describing themselves which is WRONG! Having large paragraphs in CV makes it boring to walk through and the professor might just stop there. What do you need to add here? Your hard skills. While soft skills are also important, it is often your hard skills that the professor is interested in and you would most likely be assessed on that, not the soft skills. So, you may want to list about 5 bullets summarizing your research interests and skills you have acquired over the years. Examples of research interests and Skills from someone in Civil, environmental, or chemical engineering may look like this. 1. Advanced material synthesis. 2. Electrochemical wastewater treatment using graphene oxide, 3. Material characterization using XRD, TEM, QCMD, XPS etc. 4. Cell culture, 5. Computational Modelling. My examples here are a little biased against those of you in social sciences and humanities. But let's take a look at examples from someone in the humanities. Research Interest and Skills: 1. Econometric modeling using multinomial probit and Logit and multiple regression. 2. Food security and poverty analysis, 3. Effect of climate on livelihood, (4) Special data extraction using ArcGSI. Please notice that in the humanities example, some of them are more of research areas (2& 3) while others are more of hard skills such as 1 &4. The professor after reading this already knows what that means, it means that you can apply the hard skills to those research areas.

Step 3 (3): Educational History:

This part is pretty much familiar to most of you and I am assuming that you guys already know what to do here. However, there is something I would like to point out clearly. After reviewing so many CVs, I have seen a lot of people applying to grad school would add JHS, SHS, and a host of other pre-tertiary information. This is not acceptable and should not be happening. Indicate only your tertiary educational history if you are applying for grad school. Conversely, there are people with other certificates other than degrees such as HND, DBS, diplomas, and certificates, please do add them also. However, if you are applying for undergrad, you MUST add your high school educational history. An example of someone applying for a Ph.D. might look like (see the next post)

Step 3(4): Research Experience:

In this part of the CV, you need to list in detail but very concisely the various research experiences that you have. This part is always an extension of Step 3 (2): Research Interest and Skills shown above. Every research has components so you now list the different components of your research here and the analytical tools that you used. You said your thesis was on the “Effects of graphene oxide encapsulation on platinum nanoparticles for Enhanced dichlorination of industrial and domestic wastewater” this is now the time for you to tell the professor exactly what went into the thesis, what kind of experiment you run, what did you analyze and how. All of these should be done in bullet points and very brief. Remember that your CV cannot be more than 3 pages maximum.

Step3-(5): Working Experience:

It is important to let the professor know if you’ve got some work experience. State very clearly in bullet points the types of jobs you’ve done before and the duration. In some cases, you might want to bring any internship experience here, it is all fine to state it here if you want.

Step 3-(6): Leadership/Voluntary services:

Let me state clearly here that, while this is important, it is not necessary, so don’t try to overwhelm the professor with so many positions like “class prefect”, “Choir leader”, “Campus ministry secretary/president”, “SRC rep” etc. For religious leadership portfolios, my advice is that don’t list them in your academic CV. List just a few leadership positions you’ve ever held and list more of the voluntary services that you have done. This is more important. Always remember that the professor is hiring you to come and conduct research so he might not care that much about your leadership credentials. I have seen a case where someone even indicated that JHS prefect! Do you think it is necessary to add that? Provide the answer in a comment

Step 3-(7) Honors/Awards/Recognitions:

This is another key area that the professor is interested in seeing/reading. If you’ve ever won any award list it here. Even if it was an honorary mention please list that here. Do you know why professors are so obsessed with that? Often, professors are on the hunt for grants and in most of these grants, the ideas are always birthed by the professor’s graduate students. Also, they want students who can apply and win more scholarships/grants while working in the lab. So having more honors/awards means that the student after joining his lab would work hard to win more grants which is a credit to both the professor and you the student.

Step 3-(8) Internship/Conferences/Seminars:
List out all seminars and internships and conferences that you have attended before. In the case of Ghana, some common internships are teaching practices normally done by those pursuing education. For those of you who attended UDS, you might want to list your TTFP as working experience, not an internship. Don’t just write that you went for ttfp, find a way to add flesh and flavor to that. Sometimes it is not about what you have, it is about how you sell what you have. Currently, there are a lot of online free seminars and all you need is to register and attend and get a certificate after that. All of these add some weight to your CV and give you an extra edge over your peers. Comb through the internet, get seminars that are relevant to your area, and attend

Step 3 (9) Publications:

This is what most of you feel uneasy about when you hear. I would be very blunt about it and tell you that, this is the magic. If you have just 1 published article but with a second class lower, you stand the chance been offered admission into grad school than someone with first class but without publication. YES, YOU HEARD THAT!!. Professors want someone with experience in research, so they care less about your class (that is not to say that class is not important) work on getting a better class if you still have the chance. If I were you without publication, but want to enhance my chance of getting enrolled into grad school, I d’ quickly start reading on how to publish a review paper. With a review paper, you don’t need to go and run any experiment before, all you need is to do some good reading, again and again, identify some gaps and quickly write a review on that. Someone reached out to me in 2021 to help him get a scholarship, after going through his documents, I told him to write a paper, and he didn’t hesitate but went ahead and did that. Today, I am glad to tell you that the same person as I write now is en route to his country of choice for further studies on a full scholarship

Step 3 (10) Refeeres:

Ideally, I should not be writing anything here but I have to because of what happened to one of the people I was helping to get a scholarship to Tulane University in the USA in 2021 for his Ph.D. After all the back-and-forth editing and revising his Cover letter, SOP, and cold-emailing a professor on his behalf. We got a professor who expressed interest to work with him. We went ahead and threw in an application then we started celebrating. Little did we know something was about to happen.? One of the referees refused to submit a reference letter on his behalf. Another one was submitted but without an institutional email. By the time he realized that the third person was unwilling to submit, it was too late to get another person to submit. The guy lost the opportunity to pursue his Ph.D. in statistics. So, my advice is that, don’t just add anyone as a referee, make sure that they are willing to write a good letter on your behalf and also try to get them notified in advance.

I HOPE THIS HELPS!!!!.
Go ahead and design your CV and watch out for the next Episode

How to easily find a supervisor for your MSc/Ph.D. Program -102

Hi Family!

In this episode, we are going to explore the various strategies and skills one needs to easily get a supervisor with full funding. Please if you haven’t read episode 1 posted earlier make sure you do that now!

Step 1 – Visit the professor’s website and do a lot of reading: Now that all your CV, SOP, cover letter and perhaps proposal are ready, you don’t want to waste time. How do you get the supervisor/professor’s website? Visit the university website → go to the department page→ you would see a list of professors on this page, read each professor’s profile very quickly, here you may want to skim just to see if his area of research is in tandem with what you want →If it is, then click on the link directly to his main website and then read about his recent publications. Mostly his last 3 years of publications are recommended for reading. Don’t waste time reading on his last 10 years of publications, chances are that he has exhausted that funding and likely won’t hire you if that’s what your interest is. Also, it's even possible he published those papers as a PhD student. Are you certain about what you want now? Does his work interest you? If yes then congratulations. Let us move to step 2

Step 2 – Download the very publication that interest you most and take a very careful read: Now, you are all set to begin the process. Read carefully at least two of his latest publications that interest you most. After reading what next? – edit your already well-drafted cover letter (CL) (cover letter, not SOP-These two are different-Don’t worry I would teach you how to write a winnable cover letter in the next few episodes ) to suit what the professor is working on/the publications you just read. Link your interest statement in the cover letter with what the professor is working on. Let him know you are very passionate about it and have the experience to work on these projects.

Step 3 – Read over your Cover letter very carefully and get a second or third person(s) to read over it one more time: This step is simple yet very important and you don’t want to miss it. Remember to who you are about to send your cover letter. He is a professor and not any ordinary person. Chances are that he has read thousands of cover letters and continues to receive more daily (Estimates show that professors in the USA here receive at least 30-50 emails from prospective applicants EVERY DAY! Did you hear that?). So, if your cover letter is not impressive enough and doesn’t resonate with what he is working on, he won’t even read it. So, read your cover letter very carefully and make it attractive!

Step 4 –Start the cold-emailing process: Congratulations! This is what you have been waiting to do all that while. Because professors receive tons of emails every day for supervision, knowing how to send a cold email is very important. The message should be very short and straight to the point. The subject line should also be very clear. This is where most students miss the point and the professor would not even open the email. Avoid using unclear and long SUBJECT LINES! An example of good subject lines, in this case, are: REQUEST FOR Ph.D./MSC SUPERVISION. Or PROSPECTIVE Ph.D./MSC SUPERVISION ENQUIRY or EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR Ph.D./MSC POSITION IN YOU LAB. Notice that all of these three subject lines have one thing in common, brief and clear. The professor after reading this already knows what you want and would now decide whether to read or not based on one thing. What do you think it is? -The body of your email!
Step 5 –compose a brief catchy and appealing message: The message of your mail should be short and straight. 2 paragraphs with five lines each is enough. DO NOT WRITE A LONG MESSAGE ELSE HE WON’T READ IT! Whatever you want to tell him is already in the cover letter so just briefly introduce yourself here and state your interest in the specific project/research and refer him to your attached cover letter. (Examples would follow soon). Also, state your availability for any interview if he deems you fit.

Step 6 –Didn’t hear from him/her after a week?: Don’t worry if you haven’t heard from him after one week of sending your mail. It is all part of the process. Keep sending to others and never stop. All you need is just one “YES” and you would forget about the many rejections. Often, when people hear that I had six fully funded Ph.D. offers from the USA, Canada, and Australia even before I finish my MSc, they go gaga. But when I tell them that I sent messages to nearly 500 professors, they are like WHAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS? YES, I AM!! Jim Rhon once said “If you want to play, please play, if you want to work please work. Don’t mix the two! The more you send to professors, the more you keep horning your skills and the likelihood of getting better offers at the end. So my advice is, keep sending and never bother about not getting a response. One day, you would celebrate that one yes

Step 7 –Bonus Point: Do you know that the time you spend on social media facebooking and snapchatting is just enough to change your life forever? Why don’t you give a trial? For the records, I am not getting paid for this, my only motivation is to see you celebrate and together we can achieve that. Do you also know that in the last 3 months 2 people have secured fully funded offers from this same information I shared with them? This is what motivated me to create this platform so I can reach a bigger audience. So why don’t you share and comment for better reach?

There is a lot to share with you, STAY TUNED FOR NEXT EPISODE!- Crafting an academic CV!

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A Beginner's Guide to Securing a Fully Funded MSc or Ph.D. Scholarship Abroad! 101

Please read carefully and, if possible, prepare a note. By the time we finish with this episode, you will have gained so much experience that getting yourself a scholarship abroad would be a very easy task!

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟏 - Design an Academic CV/Resume: : Design a detailed, brief, yet catchy academic CV or resume. (I will elaborate with examples of what an academic CV should look like in our next episode).

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟐 – Write your Statement of Purpose and Proposal: Write a very concise and winnable Statement of Purpose (SOP) or Statement of Intent (SOI). You may want to let other people revise it multiple times for you to make it more appealing to the reader. It takes time to write a good SOP/SOI (Notice that this is the most important part of the whole application process—A good SOP/SOI sells you 10x more than a good GPA)—We will elaborate further on drafting a winnable SOP in our next episodes.

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 3 – Identify the host Country: Where do you want to do the Ph.D./MSc. This is important because securing scholarships varies from country to country. For example, in the USA, Canada, or Australia, you need to contact the supervisor first. On the contrary, in Sweden, most cases require you to secure the scholarship first (Notice: most cases not all). Another example is that the requirements for academic CV for scholarship in China differ from places like the US or Germany. Indicating that you were president of an association, SRC president, etc. on your CV for a scholarship in China might not be necessary.

Step 4-Identify the scholarship: Each country offers various types of Ph.D. or MS scholarships. For instance, in the USA, you can either get a university-funded scholarship or your scholarship can come from the professor's funding (90% of all cases). In China, most scholarships are university-wide centralized. So, contacting a professor in China might be less significant as compared to places like the USA and Australia. Aside from this, there are also government-to-government scholarships and a host of other scholarships (we will talk more about this in a later episode)

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 5- Identify your preferred university and read about their eligibility criteria: Knowing the university helps you to do your background reading and get to know the available scholarships and the eligibility criteria early. Even if a professor agrees to supervise and fund your Ph.D./MSc, you still need to adhere to the university's requirements as well as the departmental requirements. (More on this later.)

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 6- 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: Once you identify the requirements, start working on fulfilling the requirements. These requirements can include CV, SOP, research proposal (this might be optional in most cases except for Ph.D.), IELTS, etc. You should fulfill these requirements as soon as possible because they would be requirements for most of the scholarships/admissions you would apply for. Therefore, there is no point in unnecessary waiting anyway!

𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 7 - 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫: How do you find a supervisor? What do you need? -Relax and take a glass of water! We will delve deep into this in our next episode!

Stay Tuned!!

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Hi all!

This is your most authoritative page that brings all kinds of scholarship opportunities from around the world to your doorstep. We are made up of experienced scholars from five different countries who have won different high-level, fully funded international scholarships from the USA, Germany, China, Canada, Australia, and South Korea. We, therefore, believe that it is time to give back to society by helping prospective students, especially those from Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, and Africa, to grab some of these offers.

We are committed to providing you with step-by-step guidance on securing a fully funded scholarship in any country of your choice, from undergraduate, to Masters, Ph.D. and even jobs like Postdocs and IT-related jobs. All you’ve got to do is frequently visit this page for more updates. There are a lot of opportunities out there, but our people are not always privy to the information and even if they are, navigating through the application process is often difficult. This is what motivated us to start this platform. We will be posting more information soon, including scholarship alerts, open MSc/PhD positions, crafting a cover letter, crafting a winning Statement of Purpose (SOP), cold emailing a professor, and many more.

You don’t want to miss this, do you?😀

Please invite your colleagues and friends to join this page

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