Chevening Scholarship Full Guidance
I was grateful to be chosen as Chevening Scholar in 2017. i was living in small city or some people called rural area. Chevening give equal opportunity to person who live in rural area or in city as long as the candidate can show their potential experience to be future leader. Here, I will share my personal perspective to apply Chevening scholarship with the Full Guidance. Hence, you have similiar opportunity to obtain scholarship with your own leadership experience.
STEP 1 : Basic Requirements
Each scholarship has their own requierments. As i apply to 8 scholarship in the world and got 5 of them, i knew Chevening is the simple scholarship that i know. First, you have to ensure that you eligible to apply the scholarship:
To be eligible for a Chevening Scholarship you must:
- Be a citizen of a Chevening-eligible country or territory.
- Return to your country of citizenship for a minimum of two years after your award has ended.
- Have completed all components of an undergraduate degree that will enable you to gain entry onto a postgraduate programme at a UK university by the time you submit your application. This is typically equivalent to an upper second-class 2:1 honours degree in the UK but may be different depending on your course and university choice.
- Have at least two years (equivalent to 2,800 hours) of work experience.
- Apply to three different eligible UK university courses and have received an unconditional offer from one of these choices by 13 July 2023.
You are not eligible for a Chevening Scholarship if you:
- Hold British or dual British citizenship (unless you are a citizen of a British Overseas Territory or hold BN(O) and are applying from Hong Kong).
- Hold refugee status in a non-Chevening eligible country. Applicants who are citizens of a Chevening-eligible country and who hold refugee status in a Chevening-eligible country are eligible for a scholarship.
- Are an employee, a former employee, or relative* of an employee of His Majesty’s Government, or have been within the last two years from the opening of Chevening applications (including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, all British Embassies/High Commissions, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for International Trade and the UKVI), the British Council, a sponsoring UK university, or a staff member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
- Employees, former employees, or relatives* of an employee of Chevening Partner organisations are eligible to apply, but if the employment took place within the last two years, you cannot receive a Chevening Partner Award from the organisation from which you work, previously worked, or are affiliated with through relatives.
- Have previously studied in the UK with funding from a UK Government-funded scholarship.
STEP 2 : Documents
I was gratefull that Chevening ask for less documents rather than other scholarships. Here several documents that need to be prepared.
- Translated Bachelor Degree Certificate & Transcript
If you have Bachelor Degree Certificate & Transcript with your local language/national language, you need to translate to english. The Chevening only accept translate from SWORN TRANSLATOR. it means documents that translated from university, is not applicable unless de document has bilingual language. The most common mistake having Translated Bachelor Degree Certificate & Transcript is that candidate use the university to translate the documents. - Passport
Please ensure your passport still valid until 1 year study. - LoA and IELTS are not required
As a said before, - Motivational Letter or Essays
Chevening give 4 questions to candidate about their experiences and future plan. the questions such as Leadership, networking, Why study in Uk, Career plan become their main topics each year. This essay become main assessments to seek the right candidate. The word “right” means your personal experience, purpose and goal are fit with their interest and program. Our duty is making story telling that makes the reviewer understand. Therefore, we need understand each question in chevening application to create good naration. Here the 4 questions :
- Essay 1: Leadership and Influence Question (500 words)
Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer. - Essay 2: Networking (500 words)
Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future. - Essay 3: Study in UK (500 words)
Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future. Please do not duplicate the information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form - Essay 4: Career Plan (500 words)
Chevening is looking for individuals who have a clear post-study career plan. Please outline your immediate plans upon returning home and your longer term career goals. You may wish to consider how these relate to what the UK government is doing in your country.
STEP 3 : Prepare Chevening Essays
As a chevening scholar 2017/2018, i want to share my personal essay. Hopefully, it will help you to give another perspective why this essay could allow me to become cheveners.
Leadership & Influence Question
I believe that leadership is one of my strongest qualities as I’ve had times where I needed it for survival. Back when I started attending university, I had to learn to live independently both financially and individually. In order to do so, I had to establish a small start up to cover my living costs in Surabaya. One of my successful venture into the world of business began when I was blessed with the opportunity of becoming the co-founder of CV kreasi Indonesia, a game and software developer I managed to use my leadership skills to develop the company’s system and eventually increase the number of employees from 2 co-founders to 2 co-founders + 7 employees by maintaining efficient workshifts and number of team members.
During my time at the university, I was given a chance to lead an organization named SUBMIT!, which focused on the development of small-medium enterprises (SME) in the province of East Java . Although this organization was relatively new, I managed to lead the organization to organize seminars and workshops that aimed to help young entrepreneurs in finding the solutions of their problems. We collaborated with people from companies that have good national reputation such as Astra International to ensure that we could provide speakers that can share relevant knowledge to the participants.
My passion in influencing people eventually brought me to aid the development of an SME in Tuban. With my team, I managed to work together with the locals in making an innovative product based on legen, the sap of siwalan trees. We gave additional value to legen by giving it a proper packaging, a brand name, and also clinical tests so that it would be more popular and could be sold with a high price. The product was then distributed in various stores in several cities, namely Surabaya, Tuban and Jakarta. In the end, this product was also accepted by the large supermarkets, such as Carrefour and Giant and was distributed in all areas in East Java. I was so grateful that this project could increase their revenue of people in Tuban by 20%-30% and eventually assisted the development of a village in their area.
Henceforth, based on my experiences, I believe that I am a suitable candidate for this scholarship, as I’ve had experiences in managing a team, influencing people, and eventually giving impact to a rural area in my home nation.
Networking Question
The demand of my professions as an entrepreneur and a student eventually led me to start making business networks. When I was an active member at the Karya Salemba Empat (KSE), a national scholarship which focused on social entrepreneurship, I had opportunities to participate in several programs, namely young socio entrepreneur camp. In this program, I obtained a new knowledge about developing social business starting from influencing the local people to join our project to promoting the product. Furthermore, I was able to learn about social entrepreneurship from the experts, especially from Indofood, which is one of the biggest food companies in Indonesia. Additionally, I am able to communicate indirectly to 10,000 alumni from this scholarship. Another benefit of my networking experience comes from Danone Scholarship, where I was able to learn many things about developing small-medium enterprise in Tuban, in which they gave us funding to expand the SME. Thanks to my excellent job in the enterprise development, my network in Danone eventually offered me to become a supervisor in their company, but in the end I did not accept the offer, as I’m more interested in continuing my entrepreneurship journey.
Apart from scholarship network, I have participated in some business organization such as HIPMI, a government business organization in Indonesia. In this organization, I was able to meet some entrepreneurs who are experts in their respective fields and I was able to learn a lot about business from them, which includes cost minimization. Furthermore, I also have a close relationship with Argabayu, a non-profit organization that encourages the Youth of Nganjuk to continue their studies until they can earn their bachelor degrees. In 2015 I was honored to be a speaker at the Regional Seminar in Nganjuk that focused on the Golden Generation of Indonesia, and in same year I received an invitation from my University, one of best university of Indonesia, to be a speaker at an Entrepreneur community.
In my hometown, I have a good relationship with the local people and the local government. My family had already built network among them and we have good reputation in my hometown. My family’s social organization is funded partly from these relations. Sometimes, we obtain donation for building new classrooms or adding new facilities.
To sum up, I will be more than glad to participate in any kind of events in collaboration with other Chevening Alumni as it will be a great opportunity for me to expand my network and bring good impact to both Indonesia and the UK through discussions of global issues.
Studying in the UK Question
My biggest passion has always been in the field of business and its operations. This passion would eventually lead me to establish my first enterprise at a very young age, while I was studying at university. To continue this passion, I plan to pursue a master’s degree in the United Kingdom, a country that is well known for its excellent educational facilities. Additionally, it also has more than 430.000 international students, which would allow me to socialize with students from different backgrounds, languages, and cultures. More specifically, I plan to take a master degree in entrepreneurship in one of the three universities I had chosen because I realized that a comprehensive education related to my expertise in business is essential in achieving my goals and career plans. Therefore, obtaining education through the courses I have selected and boosted by my experience, will help me to become an entrepreneur with profound skills.
There are some programs offered by universities in the UK that suit my interests and future plans. The program that I’m most interested in would be the Master of Enterprise program offered by the University of Leeds as the program is designed not for modern business, but specifically for small business enterprise, proved by the fact that it has won the Business Charter Award. The programme has a stellar record in job placements having 4,700 of its alumnus active in Britain’s micro-business and start-up sector.. Henceforth, as a prospective student who has a strong background in SME, I believe this course is the most suitable one for me as it focuses entirely on SME development. Alternatively, other programmes that also draw my interests are the master of entrepreneurship and innovation programs offered by Warwick University and Nottingham University. Those universities have the same major but their curriculum focuses are different. In Warwick, students are encouraged to develop and practice skills for making appropriate judgments, regarding the choices in their business development. On the other hand, in Nottingham students are required to combine their business with their latest technology and opportunity. Based on the curriculums I see that any of the three universities mentioned above would help me to maximize my potential to be a good entrepreneur in my hometown.
Career Plan Question
In the 2040, it is predicted that Indonesia will become one of the economic leaders of the world. However, I am uncertain that my hometown, Nganjuk, would be able to experience such things in such a short time as it’s been 1000 years since its inception and Nganjuk is still one of the rural areas in Indonesia that has the lowest level of productivity and income. Based on this situation, it has always been my dream to be involved in my nation’s development process by participating in the field that I am able to contribute in, which is Business and Economics: I want to ensure that Indonesia’s ambitious development goals are not merely wishful thinking, starting from myself.
With that in mind, my first objective is to gain more knowledge and experience in business by continuing my studies. For the short term, my plan would be to return to my home country and establish another business firm. This time, I plan to establish business that are based on agricultural resources. I think it would take around 1–5 years to ensure that my business can run well. In the trade sector, South-East Asian countries, particularly Indonesia have high potential to conduct more and more trade activities with the UK in the upcoming years. As, one of the key partners of the UK, Indonesian companies/citizens have opportunities to conduct export and import activities with companies from the UK. In this case, as a prospective Chevening alumnus I would like to become a bridge between Indonesia and the UK by participating in the export sector by supplying high quality agricultural product with reasonable price, which would help to fulfill the product demand in the UK
Besides, I want to develop Chony Zamany, my family’s non-profit organization that is located in countryside of Nganjuk. Today, we have established a vocational school and a kindergarten, and also provide non-formal education so that local people can earn better education. This organization received funding from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) division of some companies and also the local government. After I’ve finished my studies, I want to implement a blueprint in which this organization would be able to develop its own business and allow the vocational student to do a part time job to cover their living costs. Furthermore. I also aspire to establish an agreement with several companies so that these students would be able to earn appropriate jobs after they are done with their vocational school.
In the long term, I would like to participate in government programs that are designed to aid the development of small medium enterprises. As I see that people in Nganjuk would respect and listen to people with a high social stature and education, with a higher degree on hand, I would be able to dedicate myself to develop Nganjuk starting from helping the development of local Small-to-Medium-Enterprises, aspiring entrepreneurs to develop businesses that will boost local employment, to even improving education and socio-economic conditions.
STEP 4 : Writing Chevening Essays Tips
As Chevening Scholar 2017/2018, i would like to share some tips regarding Essay. This essay become main assessments to seek the right candidate. The word “right” means your personal experience, purpose and goal are fit with their interest and program. Our duty is making story telling that makes the reviewer understand. Therefore, we need understand each question in chevening application to create good naration.
Essay Question
- Essay 1: Leadership and Influence Question
Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.
There are some main point from leadership essay :
A. “Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries”
B. Explain how you meet this requirement
C. Using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.
Chevening clearly mention about individual who will be future leader or influencer in home country. It means you need to write you leadership example in you pas experience regarding business, social project or in company.
You dont need to be boss, pioneer, founder to show your leadership skills. leaders is an action that has an impact on society, company and organization. The scale start from small things to the biggest. We need to explain the problems to be resolved, the further steps, and the results. Some people use STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method to write leadership experiences. With STAR, it will help you to show some evidence that Chevening ask for.
How many examples need to be submitted in the essay? You can give 1 until 3 examples as long as it give enough information in essays.
In My case:
I tried to describe 3 different projects, in business, social organization and organizational experiences. In business,i succesfully established IT business which grow up from 2 founder to 7 employees. In the social aspect, I explained that I was part of the movement to change people’s habits from drunkenness and make products that have the same sensation as that. Hence, people will change their habits with non Alcoholic products. Finally, initiated the SME (Small Medium Enterprises) empowerment program in East Java Province that help entrepreneur increase their product value
- Essay 2: Networking
Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.
Chevening official provides several clues as follows:
A. “Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession”
B. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity
C. Using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.
In the context of networking, Chevening expects their connections have an impact on profession. I found some essay focus to desbrice their quality of networking such as CEOs, founders, government or other important people without explaining the positive impact of having connection with them.
Having good relationships with high position person is a plus point. However, they hope that we can explain the use these relationships in our careers. You can process can start with how we get to know, how we communicate and how it impacts us.
Some of the applicants’ fatal mistakes is explaining to maintain this relationship through social media. Social media is only platform to stay connect people outside there. But,
how do you use social media to maintain?
Are you use slack for communicating your task?
are you use instagram to endorse them?
Is telegram helping you to create channel?
is zoom app helping you to create conference with your boss?
or something?
These action are expected by Chevening in networking essay.
In My case:
Since have bachelor degree, i obtain 2 national scholarship from Danone and Karya Salemba Empat organization. Those scholarship gave me chance to contribute their social project and gave me opportunity to become supervisor in their company without having recruitment process.
In entrepreneurial experiences, i join with one of the largest business organization in Indonesia called HIPMI. This organization allowed me to connect some entrepreneurs who become my business partner.
In other hand, my family quite famous in hometown which gave me opportunity to establish social movement and obtain donation to fund its organization.
- Essay 3: Study in UK
Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future. Please do not duplicate the information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form
Banyak sekali pelamar melakukan kesalahan yang fatal dalam penulisan Study in UK. walaupun terbilang sangat mudah dibandingkan essay lain, essay ini memberikan gambaran yang penting tentang kolerasi antara latar belakang pengalaman kerja atau pendidikan dengan plan kedepannya. Mari kita bedah instruksi tersebut.
A. Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses
B. Explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future.
C. Please do not duplicate the information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form
Choosing three university seems easy for each candidate. Some of them access official website and found interesting information regarding their interest. They hope by gaining master degree in university A or B could help them contribute more in home country. But, those strategies doesn work in writing study in UK essay. We couldnt copy paste and paraphrase information in our essay.
As Chevening expected, each candidate should find “right” information which suit with your problems. Maybe, the lecturer or professor could help to solve your problem. In some case, their facility help you to do research deeply about their biotech or their agenda which will enrich our perspective to create policy. Those information could be gain by conducting research such as visiting their campus, joining some seminars/ educational exhibitions, emailing professors. Chevening would happy if we know more what we get in university.
Afterwards, our duty is writing about how those program could solve our problem or help our future career.
Why those courses could help your career?
Why their professor is your answer?
Why that business would help you expand your business?
In My case:
I chose Msc Enterprise in Leeds University as my first option. This program connects 10.000 small medium enterprises around UK which become my main purpose as an entrepreneur. This networking allow me to analyse the UK policy to support their SME and obtained SME owner’s perspective regarding policy and government support. I was not arguing about the curriculum or some lecturers, but, i prefer to share the hiden value of Msc Enterprise.
In other 2 universities, i mentioned about the main program of them. Warwick university focus on the practice skills for making appropriate judgments, then Notingham university encourage the businessman to utlize technology for their business.
- Essay 4: Career Plan
Chevening is looking for individuals who have a clear post-study career plan. Please outline your immediate plans upon returning home and your longer term career goals. You may wish to consider how these relate to what the UK government is doing in your country.
The last essay will complement your leadership background, networking and study purpose. Your experiences will become benchmark to measure your future plan and it should be both ambisious and realistic movement.
A. Chevening is looking for individuals who have a clear post-study career plan
B. Please outline your immediate plans upon returning home and your longer term career goals.
C. You may wish to consider how these relate to what the UK government is doing in your country.
Career Plan Essay should describe in detail your plan returning in home country in long and short term. You have to breakdown your strategy into some stepping stone to explain your movement in company or organizations. What problems do you want to be solved?
What is your strategies?
What makes those strategies works?
I gave you an example.
Example 1:
In improving midwife quality in rural area, i encourage midwife to join seminars, collaborate with government and give them proper facility. An Candidate also establishing social organizations to facilitate midwifes to share their problem and knowledge.
Comment 1:
The candidates have responsibilty to desbribe the main problem of midwivery community. Afterward, the concept of improving their quality should be explained with the right program. For example, the main problem is about unignorance midwife with anthropology. Hence, the candidates should create program based on the problem such as researching local birth, mapping and create sollution about that.
This example will give you perspective that general statemen cannot help you pass chevening assessment. We need to explain clearly the main problem, sollution and strategies to solve it. it applies to short and long term goal. In long term goal, we need to extend our contribution within 10–15 years.
What your organizations will be?
Hows is your business?
What movement do you want to implement?
How you can expand your organization impact?
would you copy this concept elsewhere?
What other policies are made to support country capital?
Others.
In My case:
After experiencing 10 years in business, I will establish new business in agriculture and try to conduct export and import with UK. Based on data, Indonesia trade with UK increase 2% per year and UK potentially open opportunity to accept indonesia agriculture product. The demand of agriculture product in UK quite high and this country try to meet the demand by doing import. Indonesia has capacity to do export. I will be bridge between indonesia and UK.
In other hand, i purpose to contribute in well established vocational School in my hometown. i will develop cooperation concept between school and company. The concept labor supply and demand make school give more concern about their internal program. With my position as a founder, i have power to create Standard operational procedure (SOP) to be implemented in our social business. Those experience will enrich my knowledge in small medium enterprises and it help me to collaborate with british embassy program.
Writing Tips Conclusion :
Writing chevening essay require nice and broad concept. The 4 essay above become full story which give an brief about candidate. From there, Chevening can assess people’s abilities, levels of success and their potency to become leaders in home country. They know that each candidate have different background and they will wisely select candidates based their interest, program and politic needs. Our job is to create essay which easy to understand essay and provide a clear picture of our potential as a leader.
As my experiences to revisi hundred of essay, there are still many candidates writing essays as they focus on general statement not the actions. This made the essay jumping and uncomfortable to read. To improve it, practice writing essay will help you to find your potential. Ask your friend, boss or proofreading services to obtain people perception. are their perceptions the same as what we want to write?
STEP 5 : Apply on Chevening website
After youre eligible to apply the scholarships, you can continue to apply the online form. In the Chevening application website, there are several point that you must know
1. Fill the CV with Minimum 2 Years Working Experiences
In online applications, there are some coloums that allow candidate to fill their working experiences. Chevening use hours as parameter to ensure candidate has minum 2,800 hours working experiences. It mean you have to calculate your own working ours based on contract or not.
a. Tips for Entrepreneur and Volunteer
Some people who work as entrepreneur like me or volunteer in non government organizations dont have any contract to their work. So, how we can calculate our working hours?
Based on my experiences, you can use your own estimation. As i have 2 business in same year, so i have to estimate the working ours. for example :
Frozen food business, 2014–2018
In this business i only spend time 3 hours/days. Hence, i write down the working hours 3 x 260 (active days) x 4 (years) = 3.120
Software house, 2013–2014
I used to spend 6 hours/days. it means that i write down the working hours 6 x 260 (active days) = 1.560
Total Working hours 2 business : 3.120 + 1.560 = 4.680
based on my business experiences, i am eligible to apply Chevening Scholarships.
b. Tips for Profesional worker
As profesional worker with no working hours on your contract, you can use standard hours 8 hours/days. Your overtime during work are not accounted as working hours.
2. Motivational Letter or Essays
Please ensure that the 4 questions from Chevening has maximum 500 words each questions or you cannot copy and paste to the applications. you can check on Ms Word or similiar app to see maximum word. In Ms Word, the information about word, you can see on bottom left (blue colour). If we click on the word information, it will be pop up like this.
3. Upload the documents
The passport, bachelor degree certificate and trancript can be uploaded on chevening application website
3. Recommendations Letter
The Chevening redesign their recommendation letter from offlane to online. It means that the candidate only submit the name and contact of the referee. The Chevening would follow up though the email. Just make your the referee have capability to open the email. For some cases, like me who live on rural area, some of people cannot open email. So, i need to change the person who give me recommendations .
4. Submit the Applications
Once, the application is ready to submit, you can go to in the end of the page.
STEP 6 : Interview
Chevening interview is one the best interview process that i ever faced. the interviewer are humble and friendly. they were asking me based on what i write on essays.
Personally, there are several questions based on our essays that you can tried to mock up.
a. Leadership Experiences
- What makes you become good leader?
- what is your role in your organizations?
- Did you ever made controversial/breakthrough on your organization/companie?
- What do you do to solve those challange?
b.Networking Questions
- What do you think about networking?
- How you can connect with those person?
- How Chevening network will help you career?
- What is your contribution on Chevening alumni network?
c. Study in UK
- What is your motivations chose those university?
- What kind of challange that you faced during your study?
- How you can manage your time?
- How your chosen university can help your career?
d. Career Plan
- What is your plan back to your home country?
- What kind of challange will you face?
- How you utilize the knowledge from UK to your career?
- What kind of further collaboration between you and UK?
Thats my personal Chevening guidance, hopefully, you can maximixe your potential and capability during Chevening applications. Hence, Goodluck for your application!
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