Most scholarships have two selecting processes: shortlisting and interviewing. A few numbers of them may have the third selecting stage—applying for admission—but this is rarely a case and merely a supplementary procedure. Arriving at the interviewing stage, you are considered one of the potential candidates being shortlisted among many other good applicants. Succeeding in interview is the final goal; however, it is not an easy task because usually you have sort of a panel interview—a form of interview which a group of interviewers jointly ask several probing and critical questions. Despite this challenge, there are always simple ways to overcome this, while increasing your self-confidence to perform at your best during the interview. Those simple steps include i) understanding main purposes of interview; ii) how to prepare yourself before interview; and iii) how to behave during the interview.

Purposes of interview:

 There are three main purposes of scholarship interview. First, interviewers want to see how your application matches the real person. The scholarship selecting committee may not trust what you write down in your application, and so interview is a method to verify this. Second, they want to clarify some points that are not clearly stated in your application. For example, they might want to clarify if you meet the eligibility criteria for application. Third, they want to see how active, flexible and motivated you are. Because studying in a foreign country is quite a challenge—for its complexity of scientific disciplines, exposing to new culture and environment, and following a new educational system—three factors that determine the likelihood of success during your study abroad are being active, flexibility and self-motivation. During the interview, thus, they want to test if you possess such kind of personality and characteristics.

Before interview:

Given the main purposes of interview described above, before interview it is important that you revise everything written down in your application and be clear in mind with those things during the interview. Besides, familiarizing yourself with the commonly asked questions during scholarship interview and possible answers as listed below, is a smart strategy which can help you perform at your best during the interview.

• Commonly asked questions:

1. Please tell me about yourself?
2. Why are you interested in this scholarship?
3. Why do you choose this field of study?
4. What would you research focus on (MSc./PhD)?
5. Why do you deserve this scholarship?
6. What is your plan after completion of your study?
7. Do you have any questions (at the end of the interview)?

• Possible  answers:

1. Describe shortly your most relevant study background, your scientific interest, work experience if applicable, and your current position/status.  Make sure that your answers well support your application. Do not replicate all your answers with something already stated in your CV.
2. Give the answer similar to what you state in your motivation letter, but elaborate more using a simple language, concrete examples from you personal and work experience or real observations. Make sure that the idea originally comes from you, from your self-motivation and self-determination. This can help a lot to attract interest of interviewers on you.
3. Depict your main interests, for example, your scientific interest. It should be the most relevant to your study background, work experience, and proposed field of study. All of these, thus, serve your future goal as, for example, an environmental researcher or a lecturer at a university, so on and so forth.
4. Give the topic of your research. It may not be clear for a master degree or undergraduate applicant during the time of application. But, if you have one, it is the advantage. For this question, you can describe the problems that motivate the research by giving real examples in the context of your home country. Also, indicate the tools or methods you would use (lab experiment, social survey, secondary data, etc…); Otherwise, the interviewers then may ask more if data collection, fieldwork, or lab experiment is needed. Be smart to know in advance if this scholarship provides research budget. If not,be ready to think in advance of how to deal with these practical things.
5. The best applicant is the one who proposes the filed of study (and research if applicable) which is most relevant to his/her study background and future career goal, on top of meeting the eligibility criteria listed in the scholarship website. So, formulate your answers to link these things up.
6. Depict your future goal: what you plan to do after completion of this study program. So, link this to your study—how your knowledge and skills obtained during the study help you to achieve your goal!
7. Optional. You may want to ask when the results would be notified.

During the interview

Quite common, scholarship interviews are in the form of panel interview —several interviewers asking interacting or probing questions. The interviews may be done online by Skype or in-person depending on the circumstance. This, in many cases, can put pressure on interviewees because interviewers usually ask probing questions and the answers to each question listed above may be mixed or linked from one to another. Below are some good tips for scholarship interviews:

• Be active, energetic but in a gentle manner.
• Speak clearly and confidently with body gesture, even though you have a Skype interview.
• Ask interviewers to clarify questions if you are not sure or if you need just a little more time to anticipate the answers. However, this should not be done more than twice. If you ask for clarification so often, interviewers may judge your ability to understand the language.
• Have at least some idea about the research you would do for your proposed study as explained above.
• Have a clear picture of the study program you did apply for, as indicated in your application, for example, the name of study program, list of courses and relevant research topics. To get this, you can check the university website or contact the person from that university who is responsible for .