The Eiffel scholarship is the most generous scholarship to study in France as it covers tuition, living expenses, travel expenses, and even medical insurance.
Many people want to apply for this scholarship but do not know how to do it properly. For that reason, I share with you the story of a friend, who won it and fulfilled his dream of studying at one of the best business schools in the world.
Before starting to apply for master’s degrees, I was clear about my goal and what I wanted: to travel to Europe, be exposed to a third language, and for the master’s degree to be in finance at one of the best universities.
Applying for a scholarship had always been present to obtain financial aid and to be able to pay the costs of the program and living expenses without getting into debt. But I thought that suddenly it would not be possible.
The requirements of the countries and universities that I had found were not so easy.
I used the Financial Times rankings page. My idea was to see if the best universities offer scholarships and if not, I would apply to others.
Fortunately, I found that there were and I decided to contact me via email with the links that I found on the admissions page of each of them. I sent them an email showing my interest in the program and asking for more information.
Some of them responded and told me that they would soon be coming to Colombia for the QS World Grad School Tour in Bogotá, an event where representatives from renowned universities meet twice a year.
I attended the event in September of that year and met the people with whom I had already communicated via email. I connected very well with one of them and after telling her about my expectations and my experience, she told me that I had opportunities to win a scholarship. That was all the motivation he needed to apply.
In the end, what did you lose by applying? The motivation I gained made me more committed to preparing for the exams and getting a better score.
Similarly, I had to learn more about writing a good motivation letter and the best way to present my profile to the university, for which I asked a friend for help. I didn’t earn it the first time.
Eiffel scholarships requirements
The biggest fear I ever felt was not trying. Not trying things implies staying with the What would it have been if and this is heavy.
I say this from my experience because in 2015 I “tried” to apply for scholarships and master’s degrees, but I did not want to do it correctly, that is, to get the energy, work hard at the letters, get the translations, the exams, etc.
I applied to two universities and neither the master’s degree nor the scholarship was awarded, so I had to wait another year to apply again. But I suppose that experience helped me to reflect, learn and improve my application to make it the best it can be.
In general, many challenges are faced during the process, the main one being the energy to meet the requirements. I believe that there is no other factor more important to achieve dreams than motivation.
In my particular case, it was with the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test), since I knew that it implied studying a lot, unbalancing my work and emotional life (with the preparation I got away from my friends a lot and in that quarter I had a low productivity in the job).
But I was thinking about the rewards of doing that exam well and what it would mean for my life.
Another obstacle was the financing of my studies and the savings that I was going to have to make to achieve it since the master’s degree that I most wanted exceeded 40,000 EUR.
Learning: start early
In the beginning, I had everything ready to apply for 6 scholarships for masters that would start in the second semester of 2017 (two in Switzerland, two scholarships to study in France, one to study in Italy, and one in the UK).
The process went very well because I started applying very early in September and October 2016 and in the end, I only paid for the application process in two programs. The other four universities were opening applications until December and January 2017.
And I say that it was very good because each application exceeded 100 euros. The plan was to pay for two applications first, and if it did not pass, it would apply to the others in December and January. But since I went to one of the two that I applied for, I saved the money to pay the other four.
In this way, early planning and identification of the best scholarships to study abroad are very important. As well as understanding the profile that the scholarship is looking for, knowing who grants it, the requirements and what factor they give more relevance to.
When you understand all these points about the scholarship you can focus on them, show your profile in the best possible way fitting what the grantors want: putting the exact words in your motivation letter.