The YouTube Scholarship – Nyenrode Business School

Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands has come up with a new way to identify potential scholarship winners using the video hosting site You Tube.

This year Nyenrode awarded its first batch of ‘You Tube scholarships’ to students on the basis of a two minute video explaining why they deserved a €10,000 scholarship for the school’s Masters in Management programme.

It is believed to be a first for a business school, where scholarships are usually awarded off the back of a long paper application form detailing criteria such as previous achievements, grades and income.

Professor Eric Melse, programme director for the MiM says, “The paper application process is a five page form that can make it difficult for us as selectors to get a feel for what a person is really like. With Nyenrode’s strong focus on personal development, we felt it was very important to find something that would allow us to better assess personality and it has had the added bonus of allowing us to form an immediate bond with the students from the outset.”

The standard of entry was so high that the school felt compelled to offer 5 additional ‘directors awards’ of €1000 on top of the original five winners. “The standard of videos has been truly surprising”, says Melse before adding, “Some of the entry’s were extremely heart-warming –to see the amount of effort and personality in them was inspiring. The most successful videos were the ones that gave a personal interpretation of what Nyenrode can offer them and an awareness of how this course specifically can help them to achieve their life goals.”

Igor Barbashin from Russia was one of the students to win the full scholarship. “To get my message across in two minutes was a challenge, but it was an excellent way for me to focus myself on the very specific reasons why I wanted to study the course. And it was fun!”

The scheme has been such a success that Nyenrode will be using it again for another batch of scholarship applications in January.