How I Funded My Academic Trips
In this post, I talk about my experiences of funding various study programs that I’ve done in the past. I believe this transparency is important because it helps eliminate the mental barriers people may have when thinking of whether a particular type of experience could be available to them.
trip to the English summer school
My very first academic trip abroad was to study English in London after the first year of the uni. We had two years of academic English as the official part of the curriculum, and the English teacher announced that she was looking for students to join a group to go to London. She had a cooperation agreement with the Burlington School of English. I really wanted to improve my English (I struggled with it at the time), and it seemed like a good opportunity to do it, so I signed up. There was no scholarship, and I had to figure out how to pay for the trip.
Prior to that, I’d been a 3-time winner and laureate of national competitions in law. Each win came with a monetary prize. For instance, winning the federal level of the all-Russian olympiad in law in the 11th grade got me a prize of RUB 60,000, at the time equivalent to about $2,000. The regional prize was RUB 24,000, or about $800. I used that money to cover the costs of the trip. If I recall correctly, my grandmother chipped in as well (she lived on retirement benefits, and I’m not sure how she was able to save any of them, knowing the Russian pension standards – but she did).
In a sense, I was lucky that it all came together this way, because I couldn’t have possibly planned this out. I couldn’t have possibly participated in an olympiad with a view to win money to fund my study abroad later. I took part in the olympiads because I liked the intellectual stimulation they gave me, and because the main prize was getting admission to any faculty of law in the country without exams, and that was a priority.
I wanted to talk about this story because it illustrates how one academic achievement can help you get access to another – or at least, that’s how worked for me, and how things you do for their own sake can have unintended positive ripple effect.
Concours Charles-Rousseau
The way we funded a trip to Cuba to participate in a French moot court Concours Charles-Rousseau is probably one of the best illustrations of my personal mantra: ‘opportunities are made, not taken’.
I mean, if there is an existing opportunity that you can take advantage of – by all means, go for it. But a lot of times, it’s not an option. A lot of times, there is nothing tailor-made for your goals and dreams.
However, whenever I share this view, people respond, ‘it's easy for you to say. Look at where you are and where I am’.
So here is a story from about 10 years ago.
Back in 2014, I coached a team for the Charles-Rousseau moot court. The most difficult part of doing a moot court in Russia is access to resources. There are no English journal subscriptions, no books, no funding (I talk about it in depth here). Universities don’t fund their teams, and only a handful of firms are willing to contribute.
The first time I coached, I funded the team myself. Moot courts gave me so much that I wanted to give that opportunity, so rare and scarce where I come from, to other people. The moot court took place in France, in a Paris suburb called Sceaux. There was a fixed fee for participation that also covered the living expenses, and I invested several thousand euros that I managed to save from my salary.
However, the next edition of Charles-Rousseau was to take place in Cuba. The tickets were way too expensive, and I didn’t have the resources to sponsor it, so I decided not to continue coaching. That was, until an eager student came to me and said that if I coached, he’d take the responsibility of securing funding.
I reluctantly agreed. Month after month passed. While I was coaching, he was knocking and knocking on doors with no success. Until one day, he found a sponsor. It wasn’t a big law firm, or a rich institution. It was a small education fund that agreed to fund our team.
We went to Cuba and had a terrific time pleading the arguments on international law and meeting students from around the world.
The combined effort of this student (the money) and me (coaching, along with my brilliant co-coach) made this incredible experience happen.
At the time, I didn’t have the pedigree I have now. I didn’t have the resources.Neither did he. Yet, we created an opportunity for ourselves and other people that had not existed before.
The bottom line: you don’t have to be high-up until you can start making things happen. You can just start – and see how it goes.
volunteer program in Ilmenau
After my 3rd year of law school, I went to do a volunteer program in a tiny German city called Ilmenau.
First, the backstory. At the time, Moscow State University had a 2-year joint non-degree program with the University of Regensburg. You had to attend lectures in the German law taught by visiting professors from the University of Regensburg and take exams, after which you could pass an interview to be selected for a fully-funded summer school (first year) or a research scholarship (second year) in Regensburg.
The minute I learned about this program, I knew I just had to go. I started learning German specifically to be able to do that program. After the first year of the program, I went to the summer school in Regensburg and got my first taste of study abroad. It was amazing.
The second year, I was so busy with the Concours Charles-Rousseau that I barely went to the lectures. I did not get the scholarship to Regensburg. I knew it was to be expected but I was devastated. First, I was in denial: There must have been a mistake! They’ll surely email me any day and say a spot opened up for me. Then, I got angry. How can they deny me a scholarship? Finally, I moved on to constructive action. Ok, I still wanted to go to Germany that summer and improve my language skills. What could I do?
I was a 3rd-year law student, on extremely limited budget. From someone I heard about volunteering abroad – so I decided to look into that. I found four NGOs that coordinated volunteer opportunities in Russia and abroad and emailed them all. I got replies from two and decided to go with one.
There was a summer camp organized by a team of students from TU Ilmenau, to renovate a student club. I wrote my very first motivation letter to them. It was legitimately horrible, full of formal phrases. But it worked, and I got an offer, applied for my visa, bought a ticket (using the award money I got for active participation in the Scientific Society of the faculty of law), and went to Ilmenau.
The organizing team provided food and lodging, and I only needed pocket money and flight tickets. I spent 3 amazing weeks there doing light renovation work for a student club with other volunteers and the team itself. Over that summer, I made a lot of new friends, improved my English and German, participated in a beer-drinking competition on the Kickelhahn mountain, and even learned some juggling (the organizers really went out of their way to make our stay interesting 😉).
I guess, the main point of this story is: don’t accept limitations. Accept their reality but treat them as givers of form. See what you can do with them. Try multiple ways to achieve what you want.
getting the RUSLEF scholarship for Harvard
The scholarship I got from the Russia – United States Legal Education Foundation(RUSLEF) is an illustration of another principle I follow in my applications: the bias for inclusion. The bias for inclusion as I understand it reads as follows: If you see an opportunity and it’s unclear whether you are eligible, err on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion.
When looking to fund my Harvard degree, I came across the RUSLEF scholarship. It was unique in a sense that it only applied to Russian lawyers – a severely underfunded category of people. However, the eligibility rules were fuzzy. The website only said that they’d fund your living expenses but did not explain under what conditions.
I thought – great! Exactly what I needed. I applied with the two admission offers I had at the time, from Harvard and NYU. I got an interview during which it turned out that RUSELF actually had partnerships with 5 American law schools, and the way scholarship worked was that a partner institution waived tuition fees, and then RUSELF paid for the living expenses. Harvard, however, wasn’t their partner institution. Nonetheless, after having considered my application, they decided to make an exception for me and awarded me a scholarship guaranteeing $28,000 for the living expenses.
I guess the point here is that rules can be more negotiable than they appear on the surface – try and ask.
[if you are interested in more, I have a whole chapter on how to negotiate financial aid in my Ultimate Guide to Funding Your Master’s Degree, including not only actionable tips on strategy but also an email template].
scholarships for short-term programs
A number of programs I’ve done in my life were about ceasing pre-existing opportunities. I believe it is important to explicitly talk about it, so that if you don’t have opportunities like this in your life, you don’t feel like you are behind. You are not. It’s just that the world is random and uneven.
To name a few:
- two DAAD scholarships for studying at the Humboldt University of Berlin
Lomonosov Moscow State University had a partnership agreement with the Humboldt University of Berlin under which one could apply for a scholarship to study for a semester there. You had to submit an application package consisting of a motivation letter, a certification of your German skills, a research proposal (you had to have an academic project you’d be working on), and a CV, everything in German. You’d then go to an interview with a commission, also in German, to present your project and answer any questions they may have. I got a scholarship in my 5th year of the law school to write my graduation thesis and then in my 2nd year of PhD to do research for my doctorate.
- ParisArbitration Academy, summer school
- The Hague Academy of International Law, summer school
- The Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg
- The UNIDROIT Institute in Rome, Italy
Each of these programs involved an application for admission and/or scholarship. Theoretically, you could apply for admission and go without a scholarship but that was not an option for me, so I always applied for a scholarship. With some of them, like the Max Planck Institute or the UNIDROIT Institute, I had to apply two or three times before I got the funding.
internship with the Association for International Arbitration in Brussels
Right after graduating from the Moscow State University, I went on to do a 3-month internship in Brussels at a tiny institution called the Association for International Arbitration. At the time, I was eager to build a career in arbitration. I applied to all arbitration houses and institutions in Europe and got into this one. The internship, however, was unpaid, and I had to fund my living expenses.
A manager at the Association for International Arbitration negotiated the reimbursement of my flight tickets by the institution but the rest was paid by my father. I rented a room in Brussels for EUR 460 (the conversion rate from ruble to euro was more or less decent at the time) and there were daily expenses for things like food. I think that’s the only program that I didn’t have a scholarship for and that my father was able to contribute to.
Takeaways
The main takeaways I’d like to leave you with here are:
- in funding, there are some rules as to what works and what doesn’t, but mostly there are exceptions. Use that to liberate yourself from preconceived notions of what’s accessible to you and what’s not.
- sometimes you choose a program first and then look for funding. However, if funding is an issue, you can try the reverse: see what’s funded and go after it.
- if there is a pre-existing opportunity, cease it. If there isn’t, try creating one. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. At the very least you’ll be able to tell yourself that you’ve exhausted all the remedies available.
- the vast majority of opportunities that will or will not be accessible to you will be determined by a variety of factors you have zero chance of influencing. Recognize that as a valid obstacle and don’t beat yourself up for not being as successful as you’d like to.
- have a bias for inclusion. If you see an opportunity that could apply to you but the eligibility requirements are not clear, reach out to clarify and negotiate.