I associate the word “scholarship” with some kind of financial assistance for poor students. But in Israel, it is completely different.
One day, a student I know who studied at Tel Aviv University said that he was going for an interview. I wished him good luck and asked what company he wanted to work for. To which he answered me that he was not going to get a job at the company, but wanted to get a scholarship. I didn’t understand anything and started asking questions. It turns out that a scholarship in Israel is not at all the same as a scholarship in Russia.
1. What do you get paid for?
In Israel, any scholarship involves work for which you are paid. There is no such thing as just paying out money. Money needs to be earned.
The conditions for receiving a scholarship are as follows: you perform a certain number of hours of some kind of work, and then you receive money for this.
This work can be very different. Most often, this means coming to a school and helping schoolchildren do their homework, explaining school material to them (a kind of tutoring). Or it could be working at the university itself, where, for example, you spend several hours a day answering phone calls about what programs the department has.
2. Interview for a scholarship
Before joining a particular scholarship program, you undergo an interview. In the case of helping schoolchildren, the interviewer must make sure that you are an adequate and balanced person and are suitable for teaching the material to schoolchildren.
3. Scholarship amount
Let me tell you that he is not bad. If you divide the amount of the scholarship by the number of hours you need to work, you get more than what a working person with a higher education receives. That is, the payment is not minimal, but very decent.
Sometimes the scholarship is not given in money but goes towards paying for living in a dormitory. That is, if you live far from the university and want to live in a dormitory, which is across the street from the university, then they will accommodate you, but with the condition that during the year you must work a certain number of hours of some kind of work.
4. Work while studying
It turns out that students are almost always working and studying. If you need to pay for a dormitory, then the work starts from the first year. If not, then they often start working on a scholarship, starting in the second or third year, so that at first they can concentrate only on their studies.
5. Research stipend
Once a student has completed their first and second degrees (bachelor’s and master’s), they can work in research conducted at the university. In this case, the scholarship will be paid for his work, for example, in the laboratory. If this student is at the Ph.D., doctoral, or postdoctoral level, then the size of the scholarship will be huge. Thus, you can earn money (very decent) by doing nothing but science. Isn’t that great?