Many students find grants and scholarships to be a crucial part of their college career. College can be costly, and grants and scholarships are a fantastic way to minimize the costs associated with education. It is important to remember that scholarships for internships abroad are available.
Continue reading to learn everything you need to know about applying for grants and scholarships when you accept an internship abroad. Reading this guide will help minimize your stress regarding financial assistance when interning abroad. In addition, this guide will help you aside if interning abroad is the right financial and career decision for you.
Can You Use Grants & Scholarships While Interning Abroad?
Fortunately, there are still several grants and scholarships that students can apply for when they accept an abroad internship. This fact may come as a surprise because interning abroad means you’ll temporarily live outside of the country. However, so long as you follow specific requirements, you will still be eligible to receive grants and scholarships during your internship.
To apply for grants and scholarships, you must know which scholarships you can get before you accept an internship abroad. The following are several types of scholarships that you can apply for when you intern abroad.
- The US Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship is intended for students with limited financial income who want to study or intern abroad. Interning abroad can take a massive financial toll and be inaccessible to students who don’t have the financial security for it. However, this grant is fantastic for helping those students get to study abroad.
- Boren Language Scholarship encourages students who want to learn different languages to study abroad to understand those languages better. When students study or intern abroad, they get the opportunity to learn the language directly from the country they are interning in. Living in a country that speaks a specific language will have a much easier time learning that language. This scholarship intends to help students who want to learn languages that are beneficial to the United States.
- Rotary International Scholarships & Grants encourage your students to get more immersed in the culture of the country in which they intern. This scholarship requires students to give cultural presentations while attending internships abroad. Then the students are expected to give a presentation about the country they visited when they return home from their internship abroad. This scholarship seeks to bring cultural knowledge to and from different countries.
- National Security Language Initiative for Youth Encourages students to learn languages essential to the United States. Some of the languages include Chinese, Arabic, and Korean. An extensive list of languages to learn is critical and beneficial to the US. All these languages can qualify to receive this scholarship. This language scholarship also encourages students to have a decent GPA.
- Phi Kappa Phi Study Abroad Grants are for undergraduates only and are intended to help these students gain experience in their field of study before they graduate. This grant gives qualified students $1000, but this grant has many requirements, and not every student can get approved for this grant. Some of the requirements for this grant include a GPA of 3.75 or higher, having applied to an abroad study program, and attending a school with an active Phi Kappa Phi chapter. Only 125 people receive this grant every year.
While these grants are specifically for students who are interning abroad, students interning abroad may also qualify for grants and scholarships that don’t relate to this fact. Therefore, college students must search around and research which grants and scholarships they qualify for. If a grant or scholarship doesn’t specify that you must live within the United States while studying, you may apply for those grants and scholarships. However, there is no guarantee that you will receive every grant and scholarship you apply for, Even if you meet the qualifications.
Accepting an internship abroad can be extremely expensive, so students who qualify for scholarships and financial aid should take advantage of that. Neglecting to apply for scholarships on time and applying for financial aid means you might be paying out of pocket more than you can afford for your internship abroad. These systems are in place to help students who travel abroad for their schoolwork.
How Internships Affect Grants & Scholarships
Some grants and scholarships specifically seek out students who accept internships abroad. However, accepting an internship abroad may also disqualify you from specific grants and scholarships if the term stays. Therefore, when applying for grants and scholarships, it is essential to read all of the qualifications for your scholarships to ensure that you don’t miss out on anything.
If you receive the same scholarships every year, you may want to ensure that those scholarships will still apply when you go on your internship abroad. Some grants and scholarships will disqualify students studying abroad from the scholarship program. However, you may be able to even things out by applying for scholarships that are specifically put in place for students who study abroad.
The only way an internship may affect your qualifications for certain grants and scholarships is if the internship is paid or your university does not approve the internship. To be accepted for grants and scholarships, you need to qualify for financial aid. Students that do not qualify for financial aid will not qualify for scholarships.
Students that do not qualify for financial aid will not be able to receive any grants or scholarships while they intern abroad. However, grants and scholarships used by students interning abroad can help with food costs, housing costs, etc.
Steps for Applying
The steps to applying for grants and scholarships when you have an abroad internship are very similar to the steps for standard grants and scholarships. The only thing you need to ensure when applying for granting scholarships when you accept an internship abroad is that you still qualify for financial aid. Some internships can disqualify students from financial aid because it could increase their income to the amount that the student no longer qualifies for.
Below are the steps that you can take when applying for grants and scholarships for internships abroad. You will still qualify for most grants and scholarships when you have an abroad internship that you would have qualified for if you were living in the United States.
- Check with your university or education facility to ensure that they approve the internship before you accept the inter. If your university does not accept the internship, then you will be disqualified from financial aid and unable to apply for grants and scholarships.
- Apply for financial aid on the free financial aid website. You must qualify for financial aid to receive scholarships when you have an abroad internship.
- Look through the scholarships listed earlier in this article and see which ones you qualify for.
- Look for scholarships that you normally apply for comma and double-check to ensure that you can still qualify for them even while on your abroad internship.
- Maintain the GPA to ensure you don’t lose financial aid qualifications that could disqualify you from receiving scholarships.
- Double-check the timeframe that scholarship applications are due by to save you time on applying for scholarship applications that are past due.
Follow the steps above to ensure that you reduce stress when you apply for scholarships before you accept an abroad internship. When you accept an abroad internship, you must make sure that the income you receive from the internship does not over qualify you for financial aid. Traveling abroad can be very expensive, and financial aid can help students further their careers affordably.
Students must be careful to maintain their GPAs, or they will be disqualified from several grants and scholarships and may even lose their financial aid. Students that do not qualify for financial aid cannot receive grants and scholarships. Fortunately, applying for scholarships for internships abroad is almost the same as applying for scholarships and grants without an abroad internship.
Final Thoughts on Using Grants & Scholarships During an Abroad Internship
Many students rely on grants and scholarships to work their way through college because college can be extremely expensive. College is even more expensive for students who choose to accept an internship abroad because they have to handle travel fees, housing fees, and food expenses. However, there are tons of scholarships that can help students who accept internships abroad navigate these expenses.
Applying for abroad internship scholarships is the same as applying for regular scholarships. You must check to ensure that you qualify for the scholarships, apply for financial aid, and keep your GPA satisfactory to receive scholarships and grants. Your educational institution must also approve internships that you accept abroad. If your educational institution does not accept your internship, you could lose your financial aid and the potential to have any grants or scholarships.
