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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Difference Between Scholarship & Grant








Several times that you will hear of people talking about scholarships and grants and you will wonder whether they are one and the same thing. Well, let us look at it and find out more about them.

Both, a scholarships and a grants let the student not pay for the tuition as they pick up the tabs for them. The similarity between a scholarship and a grant ends here.
Let us look at grants first now. A grant is the money that is given by a non-profit organization such as the government. There are grants that are set up by corporations and foundations too. The grant is always given for specific projects or study and the donor needs to get a report about the progress of it. Grants are given for different things and the requirements and amounts disbursed vary greatly. Also, the expectations from grants will not be the same. The way grants work is that a student needs to send a proposal which in turn will be reviewed by the donor. Grants at times specify the circumstances such as victims of natural disasters, entrepreneurs and home run businesses.

At times as the government has collected more revenue in means of taxation and the spending for the year has not been that high. The surplus will be doled out to students as grants.

On the other hand a scholarship is the financial help that is given to a student for attending college. It is to enable a student to continue with their education and might pay the entire amount or a part of the amount.

In order for a student to be able to apply for the scholarship they must be able to meet certain criteria. They will need to have a minimum score, a set number of attendance hours, gender specific and be well-versed in other fields too. There are some scholarships that are only given for majoring in certain subjects.

Hence, the major difference that emerges is that scholarships are far unbending and inflexible. They will not be given if certain criteria are not met. Also, they are only given for those who are entering college. Whereas, a grant is given to any student, who need not be studying in a college. It could be given to someone to start a new business or to someone who has suffered some kind of unforeseen circumstances and to enable them to get back to their feet. Hence, scholarships are linked with education whereas a grant need not be so. For a grant once it is allocated the person need not meet any other requirements except to complete the proposal for which the grant was given in the first place.

Grants and scholarships both need not be paid back by the student. A student can fund his studies by means of a scholarship and his business ventures by the means of a grant.

Both of these have been instituted to help the youth settle themselves and find their feet around.

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