Scholarships
OK. I might make a start. My name is Brendan Thomas. I’m the scholarships officer at La Trobe University. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to the Bundoora campus of La Trobe today.
I’m going to speak to you in relation to some of the undergraduate scholarships which are available at La Trobe. The scholarships office at La Trobe University is responsible for the administration of the scholarships which are outlined in the flyer, which is in your Open Day show bags. If you haven’t got the show bag yet, you can get one. There are also the flyers at the scholarship stall and I have a few here with me so you can come up after I finished talking and grab one.
I’ll briefly touch on the eligibility criteria for the scholarships but more detailed information is available on the La Trobe scholarships website, which is www.latrobe.edu.au/scholarships and that’s some very detailed information there.
Today, I will also discuss things such as funding the application process, ongoing eligibility and payments. Now with funding, the Commonwealth Accommodation, Commonwealth Education Cost Scholarships, and the Indigenous Access Scholarships are funded through federal government grants.
The Commonwealth Accommodation and Commonwealth Education costs are ongoing for a maximum of four years, which is the length of most undergraduate degrees plus honours and these payments are indexed.
For 2009, the rates are $4,415 for the Commonwealth Accommodation and $2,207 for the Commonwealth Education Cost, these two scholarships are available to both commencing and continuing students. The Indigenous Access Scholarship is the one of payment of 4,166 dollars in 2009 and it’s available to commencing Indigenous students only.
The Commonwealth Scholarship is aimed to assist low-income, rural or regional, and Indigenous Australian students by providing financial support for general education and accommodation costs associated with full-time university study. Now, I’ll get to the eligibility.
For Commonwealth Scholarship applicants must be an Australian citizen or holders of a permanent humanitarian visa. Students with Australian Permanent Resident Status or New Zealand citizens are ineligible for Commonwealth Scholarships, but they are eligible for the La Trobe equity scholarships, except for those targeted as Indigenous students.
For Indigenous scholarships above Commonwealth and La Trobe, applicants must be a descendant of Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, self identify, and be accepted as such by the Indigenous Australian communities in which they have lived or currently reside.
All applicants must demonstrate financial need and/or educational disadvantage to be considered for the equity scholarships, in addition to a number of yes/no questions. The scholarship application, which I will touch on a bit later, will lay out applicants to make a number of personal statements in response to questions, such as describe how your socio-economic circumstances have adversely affected your education.
Generally, students must be enrolled in an undergraduate course at the university. The exceptions to this are students undertaking a graduate diploma or equivalent in a federal government define national priority areas like nursing and teaching, where completion of the course is a prerequisite for initial registration to practice in that area.
Generally, scholarship recipients must be full-time to continue to receive a scholarship part-time study as I only considered exceptional circumstances, such as a prolonged illness, disability, or student has significant full-time career responsibility which impact on the ability to study full time.
As such exceptional circumstances must be outside the student’s control. Recipients who wish to drop back to part time study have to outline the circumstances in writing and approval to continue to receive the scholarship is granted or not granted, as the case maybe.
Typically, recipients can only receive a single scholarship at the one time, for example, somebody can’t hold both the Commonwealth Accommodation and the Commonwealth Education Cost Scholarship concurrently.
I’ll touch on some of the La Trobe ones that are on offer. La Trobe has a number of scholarships available annually to assist students experiencing financial hardship and/or educational disadvantage, who are commencing undergraduate study for the first time. These are valued at $3,000 per year for the normal duration of full-time study for the course the recipient is undertaking and it would also include honours.
With Indigenous scholarships La Trobe will recognize the importance of creating opportunities for Indigenous Australian students to complete her education. There are 10 scholarships annually for Indigenous students commencing study at any campus. These are valued at $5,000 per year for the normal duration of the course in which the recipient first enrolled.
The application process in 2009, La Trobe is participating in new online scholarship application process through the VTAC. Let’s get it up on the screen...
[Pause]
Applications are now open and they close on the 10th of October. The Web address for this is www.vtac.edu.au and you need to register for the ID and PIN, which is point one there there. If you haven’t already it’s the same one as for your course and then you need to log in to MyInfo…there and the scholarship application is…there. There’s no cost or fee associated with making at scholarship application. There is also a sample scholarship application available on the VTAC website if you wish to have a look at what some of the questions will be, or if you just want to have a practice run of the application prior to submitting the actual application.
There is a single scholarship application. The information you provide in your application will determine your eligibility for each of the scholarships, which are outlined in the flyer.
And the application will be considered for all of the scholarships which make the eligibility criteria. It’s anticipated that the offers to successful scholarship applicants will be sent out in around mid December.
For ongoing eligibility, typically recipients must maintain a full-time enrolment. As I’ve said earlier, part-time enrolment is only considered in “exceptional circumstances”. Each semester, recipients are asked to submit a change of circumstances form which and re-assess whether to continue to receive the scholarship.
With the payments, the recipients are paid in twice yearly instalments. By the end of April and September each year, one off payments such as the Indigenous Access Scholarship and may follow in March census states the students for the first year of enrolment.
There are also a number scholarships available at La Trobe which are faculty or course-specific. If you have any queries, for faculty or course-specific scholarships you should speak to the relevant faculty at the faculty’s stalls on campus today, they will have some information for you, and if there’s any postgraduates as well.
If you plan to commence university study in 2009 and you’re receiving enough for the scholarship and subsequently the fee course per year as a number of people do. The scholarship can’t be deferred and all you need to do in these circumstances is you need to re-apply for the scholarship in the following year when you commence.
Typically, around one in four people who apply for a scholarship at La Trobe end up receiving one as the possibility that the greater number of Commonwealth Scholarships made available in the future and this may increase the chances of receiving one.
Just a couple more points before I finish up. The parent’s level of income is not taken into account when applications are assessed. It’s the income of the actual applicant that is considered, there’s no means tested such. And so there’s a common misconception that mature age students aren’t eligible to apply for the scholarships that is not the case. So, if there’s anybody planning to come back at mature age course entry then by all means apply for the scholarship. That’s pretty much all I’ve got to say. I’ll finish up now.
If you have any questions, I’ll stick around here for a little while after the talk’s finished and I’ll try to answer any of your questions. There’s also a scholarship stall which is just down in the agora. Thank you all for your time.
[Applause]
