The Skoll Scholarship is a competitive scholarship for incoming MBA students who pursue entrepreneurial solutions for urgent social and environmental challenges. The Scholarship provides funding and exclusive opportunities to meet with world-renowned entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and investors. Once selected, these students are known as Skoll Skollars.
The Skollarship provides tutition for social entrepreneurs who have set up or have been working in social enterprises, and who wish to improve their knowledge of market-oriented practices so they can be more effective in their subsequent social change pursuits.
The Scholarship is given in recognition that the MBA may represent a significant financial burden, particularly for those who have chosen to work in social ventures rather than the commercial or public sectors.
Please note: For this application year, candidates must apply in Stage 1 or Stage 2 of the Oxford MBA application rounds to be considered for the Scholarship. Details on the application timeline are below. We will award no more than five scholarships in any year, which be awarded on a rolling basis for Stage 1 and Stage 2 applicants. We urge candidates to apply as early as possible.
Are you the next Skollar?
To be considered, you need to meet the following criteria:
1. Candidates must have started or worked ina social venture for 12 months or longer.
2. Candidates must demonstrate evidence of personal qualities strongly resonating with social entrepreneurship leadership, and illustrate how these have influenced their career path thus far. These qualities include:
* Single-mindedness and persistence in pursuit of a social benefit goal, including a willingness to face failure and start again
* A bias towards action rather than reflection
* A tendency to explore the environment for opportunities and resources
* A willingness to take personal, and sometimes financial, risks
* A habit of developing a network and subtly or unsubtly exploiting its members.
3. Candidates must demonstrate how a business education can contribute to the wider development of the community they work with in the social entrepreneurship movement. They will need to illustrate why a business degree at this stage of their career trajectory can help them amplify their impact.
4. Candidates must demonstrate some evidence of their need for the scholarship. This may be exhibited, for example, in previous work experiences or personal backgrounds which make self-funding the MBA a significant financial burden.
How to apply
To be considered for a Skoll Scholarship, state your interest in the "Scholarships" section of the MBA application form. Do this by checkingthe box next to "Skoll".
When your MBA application is submitted, the MBA admissions team will first assess your application to ensure that you meet the academic requirements sought by the school.If you are accepted onto the programme, we will send you an essay question that needs to be completed.
Please do not request the Skoll scholarship essay from the admission team – you will receive it immediately following your acceptance to the MBA programme.
The Skoll Centre will then consider your candidacy for the scholarship. If we are interested in pursuing your candidacy further, we will request a phone interview. A final decision will be made shortly thereafter.
For Application forms and more details, visit:
The Scholarship overview
(http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/skoll/scholars/Pages/scholarship.aspx)