The Global Opportunity Scholarship is offered through the BYU David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies and awards up to $5,000 to students for their first academic experience abroad.
The scholarship is open to any major. It includes a form, faculty nomination, online application process and interview before students are chosen. The deadline for spring and summer nominations is Dec. 1.
“We’re just trying to find ways to get more students on programs,” Cory Leonard, assistant director at the Kennedy Center, said.
He said that about half of the students who are nominated receive scholarships.
“There are certain groups of students who just need more help,” Leonard said.
The Kennedy Center website describes the scholarship as a “last resort” for students who have exhausted other financial options.
The only eligibility requirements are that the student is participating in an international study program without any previous international study experience.
The program started 10 years ago to combat the financial limitations students faced when trying to study abroad.
“We know that money is the reason that most students who want to go don’t,” Leonard said.
Study abroad programs are some of BYU's popular experiential learning opportunities, something that BYU President C. Shane Reese is trying to make more common.
“We are committed to increasing the proportion of students who participate in these high-impact experiential learning opportunities,” Reese said at the University Conference in August 2023.
Leonard and others at the Kennedy Center have taken this goal seriously. He said that every year they run out of money to provide to students, and he’s constantly working to find more funds.
“We’re really trying to make this more possible for everybody,” Leonard said in response to Reese’s request to get two experiences per student at this year's University Conference.
In the 2023-2024 academic year, 2,443 students participated in programs in 67 countries. According to the Kennedy Center’s fast facts, 17% of all BYU students study abroad.
“Getting out of Provo and seeing that the world is not like what it is here, I think that is something BYU students definitely must do,” Sergio Romero, a student at BYU who has participated in three study abroad programs, said.
Leonard said that they rank students based on need to decide who will receive the scholarship. He said there are groups of students that typically need more help; he calls them “the strivers.”
The strivers are typically married students, those paying their own way through school, international students and first-generation students.
Students interested in the Global Opportunity Scholarship must first print and fill out a form with their information and the attempts they have already made financially. They then take these forms to their study abroad program director, who fills out the rest and officially nominates them.
“Students have to work pretty hard to get it,” Leonard said. “Students make enormous sacrifices … their life was changed as a result of being able to go.”
Over 300 students have received the scholarship. With heavy competition, Leonard said that students should consider going on fall or winter programs because fewer students are going at that time.
The Global Opportunity Scholarship gives students an avenue to study abroad that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. Their Instagram @globalopportunityscholars highlights students who have received the scholarship.
“We want students to know you can do this,” Leonard said