Words by Riffal Ruchiandrean

Final year undergraduate students are facing a dilemma: continuing study, working or creating business. For those who want to continue their study in master degree, they will chose to study abroad. Many foundations offer scholarships to take master degree in overseas. But, the requirement and selection process is frightening with more than 50,000 applicants but only around 5000 are accepted. That being said, XL Future Leaders Students initiate XL Future Leaders “Get That Scholarship!” Workshop to give tips and tricks to prepare the Indonesian future leaders.

Led by Scherzo Wahid, and supported by a fantastic team of Dian Ratna Mahita, Muhammad Bani Syahroni, and Riffal Ruchiandrean (all XLFL Batch 3 students), this workshop received huge animo from the public. More than 270 applicants registered to join for 50 available seats. This workshop was held on Saturday, 11th June 2016 from 1 PM to 4.30 PM at XL Xplor, Senayan City. All of the speakers were awardee of master degree scholarship from different foundations. Started by Suci Fadhilah (University College London). She shared about preparation before submitting her scholarship applications.

After that, all the participants were divided into 3 big groups. There were three joints (we call them bus stops) which each group can transit for every 35 minutes. First bus stop was about tips and tricks how to make good essay, next bus stop about how to win an interview, and the last one was about how to write a proffesional CV. The speaker of essay workshop was Arditto Trianggada (Imperial College London). The points of this session were about depict yourself, show your vision about impact that you want to create, and present strong passion towards your field of study in writing an essay.

For interview session, the speakers are Tidar Rachmadi (Hult International Business School) and Muhammad Idham Habibie (University College London). The important point for interview is honesty because your eye contact, body language, and expressions are telling the truth. Before choosing the university and scholarship program, you shoud do the research about university and scholarship program. So, you can explain why you choose that university and scholarship program appropriately. How to write a professional CV was presented by Leo Mokodompit as XL Future Leaders Facillitator. He said that in making CV, photo is not necessary. Create Linkedin account and tell all about yourself on your linkedin. After that, attach your linkedin url on your CV. After 2 hours dynamic bus stop session, some participants were trying out interview simulation. The best participant in interview simulation got XL voucher as the prize.

This scholarship workshop has helped the participants about some tips and tricks to meet the requirements and face the selection of master degree scholarship. One of the participants said that after attend this workshop she can apply the scholarship for master degree confidently. As we received lots of interest for this workshop, we will conduct another session as soon as possible.

So, are you ready to get that scholarship?