Hi everyone!
I’m Eugene, the current president of the LSE EA Society. Considering how supportive and diverse the EA community is, I decided to ask here about my current situation. The question is: Do you know of any grants/scholarships/funding opportunities for current undergraduate students (not necessarily EA related)? Below, I will explain my situation in detail.
I’m coming from Ukraine and finished high school in Odesa in 2021. After this, I started an undergraduate degree in Economics at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (a double degree with the University of London). My main consideration for doing this was the high-quality education and opportunities opened after the degree while being affordable by my family. With the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, I left the country and was moving around Europe for half a year.
Eventually, I was accepted to study Mathematics with Economics at the London School of Economics. Without funding, it was obvious that my family will not be able to afford it: my dad has been retired for the last 10 years (receives a pension of around 4000 GBP a year) and my mother didn’t work since my and my sister’s birth till the last year when she and my sister fled to Ireland where she started working at a kitchen (earned 2000 EUR a month, currently unemployed and learning English). Having savings from the time when my father worked, in the financial support application form I indicated that my family could provide me 4500 pounds annually. In the decision of the financial support office, I was informed that I’m awarded a scholarship of 18k pounds, leaving exactly 4500 of tuition AND covering my living costs myself.
The decision of the office was final, and I knew that we will not be able to find another 10k or more per year for living costs. However, I managed to find a host family for the first year and to save money by working part-time in the meanwhile. From October, I worked as a research analyst intern in a small M&A company and managed to save up around 8k pounds, sometimes by working more than 20h a week (LSE officially recommends no more than 15h of work). For the next year, I will flatshare with 2 other people, spending 850 pounds a month on rent excl. bills and other expenses. So even with the savings, I will have to work.
Through my first year of studies, I became involved with EA (I read 80k career guide in 2018 but haven’t engaged with EA after that) by completing Intro Fellowship, AGI Safety Fundamentals AI Alignment course, participated in the GCP X-Risks workshop and participated in 3 EAGx and EAG London. I’ve also been elected as the president of LSE EA for the next academic year. In the academic sense, I also have high results: first in all first-year courses, with 100⁄100 in Abstract Mathematics (regarded as one of the hardest first-year courses at LSE), 97⁄100 in Mathematical Methods, 95⁄100 in Statistics, and 83⁄100 in Macroeconomics (top 3% of the class). I’ve also engaged in various extracurricular activities, you can check some on my LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugene-shcherbinin/). Ensuring financial stability would allow me to focus on exploring future career paths of high impact and engaging in the projects that develop me the most (the current paths I’m considering are economic research, AI safety, and finance with a transfer to public finance).
For this reason, I decided to try to find some funding opportunities: even small grants of several thousand pounds could support me and ensure that I will be able to fund myself through the next two years. Some steps I’m going to undertake in the next couple of weeks are: apply for additional funding at LSE (unclear if I get it since the hardship fund is for those currently experiencing financial trouble, while I’m currently still living with the host family), apply to the OpenPhil’s undergraduate scholarship even though I’m not a standard applicant, research various websites with grants and scholarships.
I would really appreciate any grants you know about or general suggestions. Thank you very much!
Hi, Eugene.
Thank you for sharing some of your story. It has been nice speaking with you on a couple of occasions.
Here are some opportunities that come to mind:
I would start with LSE’s Financial Support Office. Explain your situation and how this is impacting your participation at the University. They are the audience most likely to be sympathetic to your situation.
Open Philanthropy offers a couple of opportunities that may be relevant:
As you are a university group organizer, you might consider applying for the University Organizer Fellowship.
Given your academic interests, performance, and attendance at a top school, consider applying for the Undergraduate Scholarship. The application deadline is August 18.
The UK has a great scholarship portal.
You might also read more about support for students from Ukraine in UK higher education.
I am unsure of your status in the UK, but you may qualify for support through Student Action for Refugees (STAR).
Please do reach out if it would be beneficial. I wish you the best in your journey!
Thank you Kyle! I haven’t come across some of the resources you sent and will definitely look into them. Thanks for the time you spent looking into it :)
Hi Eugene!
This seems like the kind of thing Tyler Cowen would support. He runs a program called emergent ventures, which funds the ambitions of bright talented young people like yourself. Here’s the application link. Best of luck with everything.
Oh, that’s a very interesting idea! I knew about Emergent Ventures but never thought of applying. Will definitely give it a try!
I wrote an FAQ that may be helpful in your application, you can find it here. If you’d like to know anything else about the application process (or want help with anything else, such as having a fresh pair of eyes on your application), feel free to email me at samueljnglover@gmail.com.
Oh that’s very helpful, thank you very much for offering your support :)
@Sam Glover sent you an email!