Additional (financial) support during your studies
For many students, the start of the new semester marks a return to stressful everyday life. As well as studying, they have to find the means to earn money to be able to afford their rent and buy food and study materials. A part-time job is often the logical first choice. However, a scholarship also offers financial support at the same time as opening up new opportunities during your studies.
The word “scholarship” often puts a lot of students and doctoral candidates off at first. Deep-seated prejudices discourage students from even finding out more information, leading them to believe that there are stringent selection criteria and that the application process will require a huge amount of effort. Those who do take a closer look soon realize: Scholarships are not only available to students with the best average grades. Commitment to social issues, volunteering, participation in university life, social background or financial need usually play just as important if not an even more important role.
Scholarship categories
Alongside a reluctance to embark on a potentially daunting application process, students often feel slightly lost when they first start to look into scholarships. Foundations, organizations for the promotion of young talent, private and public scholarships, scholarships for textbooks , the Deutschlandstipendium, foundations with and without a political background: anyone new to the topic can quickly feel overwhelmed with the deluge of bureaucratic-sounding terms. However, most scholarships can be assigned to one of three main categories:
- Financial support for studies: monthly financial support to cover the cost of living.
- Grant: often a one-off payment, sometimes spread over several installments with a set purpose, for instance to finance study materials.
- Non-financial support: scholarships allowing students to benefit, for example, from seminars and workshops, mentoring, language courses, networking meetings etc. rather than providing financial support.
Scholarships can be broken down further depending on whether the scholarship is offered by FAU or an external organization. For FAU scholarships, enrollment at FAU is a prerequisite. One example is the FAU Deutschlandstipendium, which entails monthly funding of 300 euros and is available to all FAU students.
Scholarships that are not directly connected to FAU include, for instance, those offered by the 13 organizations for the promotion of young talent in Germany. These are various different foundations, some of which have a political or religious background, and others which are ideologically and politically independent.
Information and advice available
There are a large number of different scholarship programs available, which in turn increases your chances of finding a scholarship that matches your own strengths and preferences. And even if you’re not successful the first time round, don’t let that discourage you – you can still apply again for the next funding period. That apart, your chances of success vary depending on how many other applicants there are, so being persistent often pays off in the end.
A detailed overview of scholarship programs is available on our page giving details of scholarship providers. As well as links to scholarship databases, this page also publishes updates on current funding opportunities – it’s worth checking regularly!
And if you are still unsure which scholarship could be the right one for you, feel free to contact the scholarship team at FAU.