After the lengthy Chevening Scholarship application process, most applicants hope to be shortlisted to attend the interviews.
Being invited to interview by itself, is one of the greatest achievements, even if you do not win the scholarship in the end.
After submitting your Chevening Scholarship application, a group of reviewers usually go through it, reading your essays and select the ones they think are best and align with the requirements.
Then you are alerted if you have been narrowed down for the long list and eventually making it into the short list for interviews.
Being selected for the interviews means that the independent selection committee that reviews the thousands of applications each year, felt that your application and essays were strong and made a fantastic impression.
Your name is now given to the high commissions or embassies in your country and you are alerted via the portal and email that you should prepare to attend a face to face interview.
I remember I was so excited when I got this particular email in 2018. It was the end of the day and I was winding up, preparing to go home when the email came in. I could not contain my joy and rushed to the washrooms to jump up and down!
In this article, I am going to help you know what to expect during the Chevening Scholarship interviews, how to prepare for them and the common questions you may be asked.
Everything about the Chevening Scholarship is online so you will get an email and also a notification in your portal letting you know that you have been invited to interview.
That email usually contains a link that will take you to a page to select the date and time that will be appropriate for you.
The interviews are usually staggered over a period of two weeks to a month, depending on the region and the high commission or embassy in your country.
The times are usually spaced out to be every 15minutes. During my time, my interview availability were 9.15, 9.30,9.45 and so on.
My interview happened on 5 April 2018. I choose the earliest slot, 9.15am, as I had to be at work by 10am.
How Big is the Interview Panel?
You can expect around 2 to 4 people. But may vary depending on the country.
The panel usually comprises of the Chevening Scholarship officer in your country, a Chevening alumni and a member of the high commission or embassy.
For my interview, I had the three people mentioned above. My fellow Kenyan scholars reported that they only had two, with either an alumni or member of the high commission absent.
But a constant is the Chevening Scholarship officer.
They made me feel very comfortable when I got into the room, introduced who they were, what they do and what to expect in this interview.
There was a glass of water, a pen and a notebook if I needed to use.
The Chevening officer started off by congratulating me for reaching this far and proceeded to tell me about the Chevening Scholarship, a general overview.
How To Prepare For the Chevening Scholarship Interview
Your essays made quite an impression to the selection committee and now they have forwarded your name for face to face interviews.
They have already interacted with you on paper and loved what they see and now they want to gauge if you truly walk the talk.
First off, the interviewers are very nice and kind. It is not a brutal interview that will shred you apart and have you leave with your tail between your legs, no.
The interviews are a conversation. They are trying to probe you more about your essays and also to see subvertly find out if you wrote the essays yourself. It is highly discouraged to have your essays written by someone else.
When you get the interview notification it will be around 4 or 5 months since you pressed ‘submit’ application on the portal.
That is a long time and you may have forgotten most of the things that you highlighted in your essay.
Effective Ways To Prepare for Interview
1. Re-read your essay. Know your story in and out as they often ask you to clarify some things you wrote and you do not want to be caught unawares. That will be a red flag to the panel.
2. Go through the Chevening Scholarship website and familiarise yourself with its aims, why it exists, the type of impact it has had, and the ‘typical scholar’ they are looking for – though there isn’t necessary a ‘type’.
This kind of revision if we can call it that, not only builds your confidence but also helps you to stay on target, if there are some things you had previously overlooked – and also helps you when you have to come up with any questions when asked, at the interview.
3.Do mock interviews.
This is the most crucial step.
Here you will need to have the sample questions and have a friend or family member ask you the questions.
This helps you gauge if your mumbling, if your answers are clear and concise and if you make sense or are convincing.
My younger brother was my mock interviewer and he was brutal with me 😉
I told myself if my answer makes sense to him, then the panel will also understand them.
Questions To Expect During the Chevening Interview
As I was preparing for my interview, I got some sample questions online and also from the Chevening Applicants Facebook group that I was a part of.
The interviews were happening globally and some countries had their interviews a month or a week earlier than the rest and they would come to the group and post the questions they were asked.
Luckily, there was a 2016 Chevening scholar that I connected with on Instagram and she was able to share with me some of the questions that she was asked.
Questions I Was Asked During My Chevening Interview In 2018:
- Tell us about yourself
- Why do you want to get the Chevening scholarship?
- Why did you choose the UK to pursue your selected Masters course? (I answered what I wrote in my essay)
- What do you plan to do apart from studies in the UK? (I spoke about my hobbies, travel plans)
- Tell us about a difficult challenge you encountered while in leadership and how you resolved it.
- What are your career plans? ( I gave a summary of my essay)
Here is a list of more questions people are commonly asked:
- Why should we give you the scholarship? How will it help you?
- Can you share an experience where you failed and what you learned from it
- How does the Master’s Degree fit into your plan for the future?
- Why did you choose this specific course?
- How can you use your past network to engage with Chevening?
- How will you make use of the Chevening network afterwards?
- How will you help foster UK relations with your country?
If you would like more sample questions to practice during your mock interview, I have an article where I listed all the interview questions that previous Chevening scholars were asked during their interviews.
At the end of the interview
Before the close of the interviews, the panel will inquire if you have any questions for them. I directed mine to the Chevening alumnus, asking them how the scholarship has benefitted them this far.
After the interview is over, they ask if you want to change the order of your university ranking.
These are the three universities that you got unconditional offers from. Maybe in the portal you had one as your first choice and you know prefer another one, that is teh time to swap them.
I changed mine at the end of the interview. If you don’t want to , that is also OK.
I hope you found this article useful.
Thank you for stopping by and reading this friend!
Please comment below if you have any questions
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