Recruitment and admissions

• Additional support provided by the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program and information captured in the application form helped the Scholars Program Team to advocate for admissions cases on an ad hoc basis, where contextual understanding could be applied to their admission.
• The Scholars Program Team worked to make the recruitment and selection process more inclusive and opened up discussions around outreach, contextualised admissions, and orientation support integral to welcoming students who may lack some of the formal prerequisites. For example, the University launched free online English language testing so students with limited economic means did not need to travel across their country to get tested.
• Information collected on the performance of early cohorts of scholars helped:
  • ​​​​​ support a policy change to allow scholars to be tested for English language proficiency internally by the English Language Education.
  • contributed to the inclusion of over 20 African universities from which degrees can be evidence of English language proficiency.

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• Putting in place flexible, simplified admissions procedures contributed to removing barriers not just for scholars but for other international students as well.

• Create and resource an application, admissions and enrolment system and environment suited for all under-resourced applicants.
• ​​​Create an application process which provides the data required to know who our Global Access students are, building on the “flag system” used to identify Widening Participation students.  
• Centralised resourcing for in-house English Language testing to enable more contextualised support for under-resourced applicants

• As well as increased costs of the immigration and health surcharge, there are costs for TB tests, English language testing, flights, and relevant travel to these activities. Without support to cover these costs, scholars would not be able to fulfil Edinburgh's entrance requirements. The  Scholars Program Team found alternative solutions (such as in-house English language testing) or covered these costs.
• The Scholars Program Team worked with the University's Student Systems team to launch a Western Union retail platform to ensure scholars and other scholarship students receive funds as they require – especially as many do not have bank accounts.
• The Scholars Program Team negotiated permission to waive the application fees for scholars who were accepted to the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program.

• Consider the full costs scholars will incur, including pre-arrival costs and work through accessible finance systems to ensure scholars have access to funds before they incur any costs.
• Don't rely on reimbursements which assume access to alternative sources of funding.
• Consider the hidden financial costs for online scholars and financial support for online distance learner scholars in the same way as for on-campus scholars.

University-based bridging programmes support refugees to:

• Develop the ‘ontology’ of the university student by affirming to them that they belong in higher education.
• Help them to build social capital and learn the unspoken cultural rules of a campus environment.

View the Foundations for All Toolkit

• Develop bridging programmes specifically for “global access” students wanting to apply to the University.
• There is evidence to suggest that bridging programmes benefit from being clearly nested within Universities, rather than being provided by other organisations or kept at arm’s length from the university.
• Further learning and recommendations are included in the Foundation for All (FFA) toolkit.

View the Foundations or All Toolkit