Financial Aid on Coursera Courses

We are living in a changing world where things surrounding us are stepping up to a new level at every moment. It’s becoming essential for all of us to acquire newer and newer skills and updating us. Thus, the importance of ‘online learning’ is sharply increasing with time.

There are different online sources – including edX, Coursera, Lynda (LinkedIn Learning) – that we can use to enhance our skills. In the last few years, I have tried several of those and found the paid courses of Coursera as the most efficient one. However, the amount needs to be paid is a bit high for the students, especially if they are from the developing countries, so there are number of financial aids for each course. Unfortunately, not many people are aware of the procedure. In this article, I will describe the step by step application procedure.

First of all, you need to have a Coursera ID, if you don’t have any, just create a new one. If you already have one (or, have already confirmed your email), then simply go to the Coursera.org website and log-in with your username and password.

The following page will pop-up after logging in.

Which course to learn? Well, for example, in the last few months, you are planning to take your ‘data analysis’ skill to a new level, you can simply search this in the ‘search toolbar’. There will be several related courses, if you select one then the following page will appear. If you are interested in submitting the financial aid application, DO NOT click ‘Enroll for Free’. If you have already started enrolling in a course, your scholarship application will not be considered for the evaluation.

Now, if you click on ‘Financial aid available’, a new page will pop-up.

Here, you need to select the first option: ‘Continue to the application’.

Now you need to click on the two points and need to write the statement: ‘I agree to the terms above’, which will lead you to the main application form.

In the final page, you need to fill up your basic information and write two 150 words paragraph.

When you are done with above steps, Coursera will take 2 weeks to evaluate your application and will email you their decision.

Just in case any of you wants to know how to decorate those paragraphs, I have attached my responses. Please note, the first question contained personal information and I have removed two sentences from there.

Why are you applying for a scholarship? (150 words minimum required)

I am a second year Ph.D. student at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland. Although I am a fully-funded scholarship recipient, the scholarship salary is around $X AUD per month which is very low if to compare with the higher living expense in Brisbane. Thus, my Ph.D. scholarship is not sufficient to save money in order to attend courses like this. At the same time, I am not aware of any source at the University of Queensland which gives money to support attending any course or specialization like this. For this, it is really difficult for me to save money to spend elsewhere.

How will taking this course help you achieve your career goals? (150 words minimum required)

As a part of my doctoral research, I am working on the causes and consequences of butterfly migration, and considering their global distribution for the analysis. Of the four pre-planned chapters, the second one aims to find the hotspots of migratory butterflies and the third one aims to investigate how protected areas are conserving migratory butterflies by collating the distribution of protected areas and migratory butterflies and will also reveal where we should focus. For this, I need to have a very good understanding of Data Analysis. Apart from that, I dream to become a conservationist in the near future, who will dedicatedly work in developing countries. To achieve my goal, it is necessary to have a precise knowledge of creating and arranging datasets, and playing with the figures. Without having the fundamental skill on exploratory data analysis, it’s kind of impossible both to proceed with my Ph.D. chapter plan and to touch my career goal. I think it is worth to mention that I have successfully completed three other courses on Coursera with excellent grades.

Hope it helps! If you find this article or the application difficult, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Note: The feature image is collected from shutterstock.