We explain assistantships, scholarships, fellowships and grants .
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
This week in our Foreign Student Series, we look at financial aid that comes in ships. Scholarships, fellowships and assistantships.
But first we talk about financial aid of another kind: grants. A grant, unlike a loan, does not have to be repaid.
One of our examples this week is the University of Missouri-Columbia, known as Mizzou (pronounced mah-ZOO). Mizzou is a public university with more than 1,500 international students this school year. The total student population is more than 30,000.
Mizzou has a grant program for international students. The Curator's Grant-in-Aid program is for those who get good grades and take part in university activities. Graduate students who receive a grant get 9 free credits to take courses. Undergraduates receive between 1,000and 5,000 dollars in support.
Students must have attended Mizzou for a year before they can receive a grant. And they must reapply for the awards each semester.
Some grants are called scholarships or fellowships. Scholarships are for undergraduates; fellowships are for graduate students. Awards may be based on financial need or on grades, talents or other requirements. The Global Heritage Scholarship at Mizzou, for example, is only for international undergraduates whose mother or father graduated from there.
The scholarship pays 7,500 dollars a year for tuition. Full tuition is currently almost 19,000 dollars.
Tuition is about the same at another public university, the University of Arizona in Tucson. It offers an undergraduate scholarship for international students who earned high marks in high school. The program is open to all foreign students who have been admitted to the university. Winners receive between 2,000 and 10,000 dollars a year to help pay tuition.
70 international students are currently receiving the scholarship. The University of Arizona has more than 2,000 international students this academic year. The school had close to 40,000 students during the fall term.
Assistantships are jobs paid with money or free classes. Graduate assistants help professors for about 20 hours a week. They may teach undergraduates, grade papers and tests, and assist with research.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. The earlier reports in our Foreign Student Series are at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.
