Postgrad Step-by-Step: Sponsor

Salam and good day all!

I've talked about applying to university before, after that is to find a scholarship to sponsor your study abroad.

If you choose a non-science based course, there are plenty of corporation and companies that offer scholarships for students to further studies abroad. There's only a few government scholarships that sponsor for various courses such as MARA (more like a loan), JPA (only to those who are bonded with JPA during their previous studies), Khazanah (under GLC) and Yayasan (depends on your state).

Engineering courses could get sponsors from companies like Petronas, Shell, Sime Darby etc. Business and Accountancy can get sponsors from National Bank, all types of banks really...

If you plan to become a lecturer one day, the best thing that will suit you is a fellowship programme. A fellowship programme (different university may have a different name) is a contract between you and a local university (UM, UKM, UIA etc) where the university will sponsor you to study full-time. After you've finished, you have to serve the university as a lecturer. So, it'll be a win-win situation.

But, renowned universities such as UM, UKM, UIA, usually are lacking in placements for new lecturers. New and younger universities such as UMP or other college universities might have more placements for lecturers and you might have a better chance.

If you're thinking of applying to MARA like me...you need to always..always...always check their announcements on their web. 

Usually for MARA, their application for postgrad sponsor is during March of each year. If you succeed in your application, they will call you for a psychometric test. During the test, you need to fill in a form (which they email beforehand) and provide some documents. 

The test is quite simple. It's just the time constraints that's difficult. Because you will have 100 questions to answer in one hour. Some questions you may need more than 1 minute to answer. The questions are divided into two parts, Part A: Malay, Part B: English. The questions will consists of grammar, math and reasoning. grammar and reasoning is quite simple, but math, for me it's quite complicated because you need to calculate. Unless you're a math wiz, then you're fine.

After the test, you will need to always check on the application page for your result. If you passed, the message would say...Congrats! Sometimes, you've passed, but the university that you got is not on the list. So, they may ask you to change uni (like my case) or you can try to plead. 

For me, pleading takes more time and resources than to apply for a different uni. So that's what I did, and Alhamdulillah...I got an offer from Imperial. 

After you've received the offer from MARA, there are still more requirements you need to fill. For example the medical examination (private hospitals will take shorter time to give the result), the agreement form which you need to get signatures, the revenue stamp from Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (LHDN) and make 5 copies. 

Most of the times, the university that you applied to require the financial affidavit to confirm that your sponsor will pay the tuition fees in full. 
After you've settled all the documents, only then you will receive the official offer from MARA and the financial breakdown that you are entitled to. 

So now, you're set for your sponsorship. The next step would be applying for VISA. 

Until next time.