FRIS Postgraduate (One year MSc) Scholarships

The Problem

Every year approximately 150,000 students come from the Indian subcontinent to the UK and EU universities to study for post-graduation and a significant number of them study biomedical sciences including biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, biotechnology, stem cell biology and related subjects. One of the modules of the MSc programme involves a short laboratory-based research project on which they spend about 12-14 weeks and at the end submit a research report (dissertation). This is the first time in their life they get a chance of working in a research environment and whether they would take research as a profession going forward would depend on their experience in the MSc project. It is therefore extremely important that they should be able to spend as much time as possible in the lab on their projects. There are two main problems facing the students arriving in UK/EU:

  1. When students leave their home country for the UK/EU, they budget for their expenses and invariably they underestimate their expenses. The shortage of funds forces them to take menial jobs, which prevents them from focussing on their studies.
  2. In some cases, students do so well in their projects that their research data are publishable, but as they are short of funds they are unable to pay the publication cost. So, despite having high quality publishable data students are unable to publish their results which affects their long-term career prospects.

FRIS proposal

The Board of Trustees of FRIS Charity UK unanimously approved that students from the Indian subcontinent going to pursue postgraduation (one Year MSc) in biomedical sciences can apply for FRIS scholarship before leaving for the UK or countries of EU. The application forms will be available of FRIS Charity UK website https://frischarity.org.uk. The scholarship will be advertised through social media such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp and through educational agents based in the Indian subcontinent.

The total of value of the scholarship will be up to £5,000 (or equivalent in euro) per successful applicant. The scholarship will pay:

Visa fee (50% up to £500 or equivalent in euro)
Airfare (50% up to £500 or equivalent in euro)
International Healthcare Surcharge (50% up to £500 or equivalent in euro)*
Food (one off payment of £500 or equivalent in euro)
Publication cost (50% up to £3,000 or equivalent in euro)
*Most EU countries require international students to have health insurance during their stay in their country. FRIS scholarship will contribute up to £500 (or equivalent in euro) toward the cost of health insurance cover for the year.

These expenses will be re-imbursed on producing original receipts with the exception for food. These payments will never be in cash instead they will be online transfer into the students’ personal bank account.

If the research project results in a publication in which the student has made significant contribution, FRIS Charity UK may be willing to contribute up to 50% of the publication cost (maximum £3000 or equivalent in euro). In such case the project supervisor will have to apply to the charity giving details of the publication and student’s contribution in the study. The application for the publication cost must be submitted within one year after completing the postgraduate programme. During this period the research data should be compiled and
presented in a manuscript format.

How will the scholarship help the student?

The proposed scholarship will provide financial support to under-resourced students so they will be able to focus on their education removing the necessity for exhausting part-time work to meet their basic needs. The other and most important aspect of this support is the provision for 50% of the publication cost of a research paper should the student produce publishable data. This will give them an excellent research experience which will encourage them to undertake research as a profession by joining a PhD programme, post-doc etc.

Application Processing Fee (APF)

To ensure the scholarship award process is reserved for committed and eligible candidates, a mandatory Application Processing Fee (APF) has been implemented for all applicants. A non-refundable APF currently set at £20 can be paid either through interbank transfer or online payment using Stripe platform. Please make sure that the net payment, excluding all expenses, into our UK account is not less than £20. Please include a transaction ID or payment receipt in your application. The detail of how to pay the APF is given in the dropdown menu of the Donation header of the webpages and in the notes of the application form.