Guidance for applicants
Additional information to help you complete your application
Scholarships are only available for accredited courses at UK universities. International students who are or who will be studying in the UK are welcome to apply, subject to visa requirements (see below).
The application form and supporting documentation are the same for all undergraduate scholarships. The Scholarships Committee will decide which scholarships are most applicable to shortlisted/successful applicants.
IET accredited degrees
Check that your degree course is accredited by the IET by downloading the directory of IET accredited courses. We are unable to consider an application for scholarship for if your course of study is not accredited by the IET at your university. Universities decide which of their courses they will seek to have accredited by the IET: please do not assume that a degree course that is IET accredited at one university will automatically be IET accredited at another.
Application form
- The application form should be saved with the applicant’s name in the title e.g. ‘Smith, Sam’ and sent by email.
- Please ask your referee to save the reference form with your name in the title e.g. ‘Smith, Sam Reference’ and to send it via email.
- Please send your application form in a file on its own and send supporting documentation separately in one or more additional files. Hardcopy supporting documentation should be scanned, internet documentation (e.g. UCAS, examination transcripts) should be sent as a print screen (Alt+print screen, paste into Word document/image application and save).
- The size limit for incoming e-mails to the IET is 10 MB. If the sum total of attachments makes your e-mail larger than this, please split them into two or more e-mails. Please use common file formats for images (e.g. jpg, pdf, png) and ensure that scanned images are the right way up.
- Attachments to entirely blank e-mails can be difficult to locate in case of query. Please ensure your covering e-mail contains your full name (as shown on your application form) in either the subject line or the text and ask your referee if they would be so kind as to include your full name in the subject or text of their e-mail in any correspondence with us.
- Please ensure that any e-mails from theiet.org domain do not go into your spam folder – all correspondence will be via e-mail.
- Except for changes in contact information, which may of course be made at any time necessary, amendments to forms will be accepted only up until the deadline and only as entire forms – we are unable to edit them for you.
- As long as it reaches us before the deadline, the date you submit your application makes no difference to its consideration by the Panel. However, please try not to leave your application until the last minute. The end of June is a particularly busy time for academic referees - give them time to do you justice.
Completing your application form
1 Personal Information
Nationality: if you are not British or a national of a country within the European Economic Area or Switzerland, we will require a scanned copy of documentation that proves your eligibility to live and study in the UK (student visa, leave to remain etc). If obtaining a student visa is dependent on your examination results, please let us know in the covering e-mail you send with your form.
If you do require a visa to study in the UK and obtaining a visa will be dependent on your examination results, we need evidence of a conditional offer from a UK university before we can consider your application.
2 Education
University:
- You must supply full, correct details of your selected university (e.g. ‘Manchester Metropolitan’, not ‘MMU’), degree type and course title (e.g. ‘BEng Electrical & Electronic Engineering’) and the UCAS code for your course (e.g. H600). If you are not sure of any of these, please check with the university. Applications with incomplete or incorrect course details will not be accepted.
- Date of commencement is the month and year you started or propose to start the degree course (not including foundation years).
- If you are not already at university, please scan and send any documentation from UCAS or your chosen university which confirms registration on your degree course.
- If you do not require a visa to study in the UK, you may apply for an undergraduate scholarship for degree courses starting in 2011. If you have not yet applied to universities and are applying for a scholarship to start in 2011, you must still complete the full details of the degree course for which you intend to apply, in order to enable the Panel to make an in-principle decision.
School/6th form /FE college:
- If your exam results are not available, please insert provisional results onto the form and mark them as provisional.
- Note for international students on UK school qualifications:
- GCSE: usually taken at age 15/16
- ‘AS’ Level: usually taken at age 16/17
- ‘A’ Level: usually taken in the final year of school at age 17/18, equivalent to US graduation, International Baccalaureate, etc.
3 Your information
Word limits are given as guidelines. We do not count these sections at the initial eligibility check stage, however, the Scholarship Panel may penalise obvious excess.
4 Financial circumstances
- The IET understands that it may be impossible to provide exact figures for some items of income and expenditure and estimates for these are acceptable. These should be as realistic and accurate as possible and should reflect your expected financial circumstances during your time at university.
- An IET award may be held in addition to a student loan/EPSRC grant, or similar, and company bursaries. Candidates who are receiving industrial sponsorship should indicate this in their application, stating the value of the bursary;
- If you are applying for a scholarship on the basis of financial need, then you must complete this section of the form as fully as possible. If you are applying for a scholarship on the basis of excellence only, then the Financial Statement is entirely optional.
- Note: The Scholarships Committee will consider an applicant's financial situation on their personal projected income / outgoings. Parental income is not taken into account.
5 Publicity
Your responses to the questions about publicity or receiving information from award sponsors will not affect your application and are required only for data protection purposes.
6 Referee details
- Please ensure you complete this section as fully and accurately as possible to help us match references correctly with applications.
- It is your responsibility to ask your referee for a reference: we will not contact referees to obtain them on your behalf.
- Your referee should ideally be someone who is in a position to comment on your academic ability (e.g. school or college tutor) or an employer. Relatives or people living in the same household are not acceptable referees.
- If you are still at school/college (e.g. undertaking an access course) or already at university at the time you apply, an academic reference must be supplied, unless you are on placement, in which case your reference must be one of an academic reference or an employer/supervisor reference. You may submit more than one reference and candidates with industrial experience or sponsorship who are submitting an academic referee are encouraged to submit an additional reference from a training supervisor or manager in further support of their application. If an issue arises that means that your original referee is unable to supply a reference, alternative academic or employer references are acceptable.
- The reference should be sent to us by your referee, to awards@theiet.org.
What happens next?
- We will endeavour to acknowledge all correspondence within 3 working days of receipt. Please note that the volume of correspondence close to the closing date means that this may extend to 4-5 days. If your e-mail arrived before the deadline, the information within it will be included with your application. Please only telephone to check arrival of e-mails if you receive an error message.
- Near to closing dates, we will endeavour to send out reminders for outstanding information. However, owing to large volumes of correspondence at these times, please do not rely on this (we have no obligation to remind you). We recommend you make use of the checklist on the first page of this guidance to remind you what information you will need to send us once you receive it.
- The Scholarships Panel meets in the latter half of September to consider applications. If you are applying for a scholarship to start in your first year of university, the application process includes an interview at that time – dates to be confirmed – which will take place in London. Please take this into account when planning holidays/travel, in case you are shortlisted. If you are invited to interview, we will give you full information about how to claim reasonable travel expenses.
If your application is unsuccessful
- We will notify you; however, owing to the volume of applications, unfortunately we will be unable to give individual feedback on why the Scholarship Panel did not select you for an award.
- You may apply for the following year(s) of your IET-accredited undergraduate degree course.
- Whatever the outcome, the IET wishes you well in your chosen University studies.
