Through partnerships with well-known scholarship groups, the University of Alberta is happy to help UAlberta students who want to go on to graduate school. Students who want to go to graduate school at either the University of Oxford or McGill University can apply for these prestigious scholarships.

Rhodes Scholarship

Scholarship Details

The Rhodes Scholarship helps 103 outstanding students from all over the world go to Oxford University in England to study. Each year, 11 students are chosen from six regions of Canada, including three from the prairies. Since the University of Alberta was founded, 76 of its students have been chosen, including eight since 2015.

Value: The Rhodes scholarship covers tuition and application fees at Oxford, a personal stipend, and economy-class airfare to the U.K. from Canada at the beginning and end of the scholarship. For more information, see the Rhodes Trust website.

Eligibility

This contest is open to any student at the University of Alberta who will have a bachelor’s degree by the time the study period at Oxford starts.

The Rhodes Scholarship is an internationally competitive program: in addition to the basic eligibility requirements, candidates must demonstrate exceptional academic and leadership achievements.

Please visit the Rhodes Scholarships for Canada website to see the complete list of eligibility requirements for the competition. To be a successful applicant, we encourage you to read the Information for Candidates document.

Even though the program tries to get a wide range of applicants with different skills, most successful candidates have a mix of the following:

• Outstanding academic achievement
• Demonstrated leadership skills and experience
• Extra-curricular involvement
• Passion, empathy, energy, commitment, and drive

UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION PROCESS

How to Apply

In order to apply to the Rhodes competition, your application must first be reviewed by a University of Alberta selection committee, then forwarded to the president for endorsement. You can only apply for the Rhodes competition after the university has officially backed you.

Please keep in mind that the application timeline below is for the study period beginning in October 2023.

Step 1: Apply for endorsement

Submit the academic statement of the study, personal statement, and curriculum vitae you will use for your Rhodes application via this form!

Your academic statement of study is 350 words or less and should tell the committee the reasons you wish to study at Oxford, what your chosen course(s) of study are, and how this fits into your academic trajectory. You may wish to explain how you hope to be stretched academically at the University of Oxford, and any academic support you imagine might be helpful. Show that you can at least meet or exceed the specific entry requirements and other academic requirements for the course(s) you have chosen. Tell us how you are prepared for the course(s) academically and otherwise.

If you wish to undertake a DPhil, provide a brief outline of your proposed research area, and how it contributes to your future career plans, and list both the department in which you propose to undertake your research and one or more researchers with whom you would like to work in Oxford.

Your personal statement should, in 750 words or less, tell your story in your own voice and cast an overarching narrative for the selection committee. Please address each of the following prompts (the word allocation across the three is up to you):

1. Which Rhodes Scholar quality do you display most strongly, and how are other contexts and people helping you to develop the others?
2. What would you like to learn from Rhodes and the wider community in Oxford?
3. From your place in the world, what is humanity’s greatest need?

Your CV/résumé should list the most important things you did and awards you won while you were in college, such as scholarships, prizes, awards, leadership positions, athletic records, extracurricular activities, and any other achievements. This should not exceed two A4 (12 pt) pages in length. More information on each of these components can be found in the Information for Candidates document and the Application Overview webpage.

Step 2: Apply to the Rhodes competition

The application form can be found on the Rhodes website.