The Scholarship, In Plain Terms
ladoscholar: Lausanne sits where the Alps meet Lake Geneva, and every year the University of Lausanne quietly hands ten international students a ticket to live and study there without the tuition bill hanging over their heads. That’s the whole scale of the UNIL Master’s Grant, small, deliberately so. It isn’t trying to be a mass-access program. It’s built for the graduate whose transcript already speaks for them: the one who finished top of a cohort somewhere far from Switzerland and now needs someone to bet on them.
What you get if you’re picked: CHF 1,600 a month, paid out over 10 months a year (mid-September to mid-July), for however long your specific master’s officially runs; usually a year and a half or two years. Registration fees get waived too, aside from a small CHF 80 per-semester admin charge. One thing worth being upfront about, because the glossy scholarship-aggregator sites tend to skip it: this stipend is not designed to fully cover the cost of living in Switzerland, one of the most expensive countries in Europe. UNIL says so itself. Come in with a realistic budget, not just an acceptance letter.
The catch that trips people up most: this isn’t a scholarship you apply for after getting into UNIL. The scholarship application is your admission application. One form, one submission, no separate track.
How To Actually Apply — Tips, Documents, and a Sample Essay
Who this is realistically for. You need a bachelor’s degree (or one on the way) that’s equivalent to a Swiss bachelor’s — meaning a real, substantial three-to-four-year academic credential, not a shorter diploma. You need a genuinely strong transcript, not just a “good enough” one — UNIL is explicit that this is a merit scholarship for students who “distinguished themselves” academically. And you need C1-level French or English, matching whichever language your chosen program is taught in. If you’re still finishing your degree when you apply, that’s fine — but you’ll need to submit every transcript you have so far, plus a precise written breakdown of what’s left: remaining modules, credits, thesis topic, and expected completion date. Vague plans get you nowhere here; specificity is what a reviewer trusts.
Timing tip: Applications close around November 1 for the following autumn intake. Because the form doubles as your program application, don’t wait until the deadline week to start gathering documents — transcripts and certified translations take time, especially if your university is slow to issue them.
Documents you’ll typically need to have ready:
- Completed online application form (also functions as your master’s program admission form)
- Certified copy of your bachelor’s degree (plus certified translation if it’s not in French/English/German)
- Full official academic transcripts
- Curriculum vitae
- Motivation letter
- Proof of language proficiency (C1 — IELTS/TOEFL for English, DELF/DALF for French)
- If your home university’s country hasn’t ratified the Lisbon Recognition Convention, you’ll also need to post certified paper copies of your documents directly to UNIL — check this before you assume everything can be uploaded digitally.
Motivation letter — what a strong one is actually doing. Selectors aren’t looking for a list of your achievements; your transcript already carries that weight. They’re looking for evidence you know exactly why this master’s, at this university, is the right next step — and that you can articulate it without padding. A short structural sample:
Opening (2–3 sentences): Name the specific master’s program and state, concretely, what pulled you toward it — a research area, a professor’s work, a gap you noticed in your own training.
Middle (core paragraph): Connect one or two specific pieces of your academic background to the program’s actual content. Not “I have always loved biology” — instead, something like: your thesis on alpine ecosystem resilience is why UNIL’s environmental sciences track, not a generic one elsewhere, is the logical continuation.
Closing (2–3 sentences): Say plainly what you intend to do with the degree afterward, and why studying in Lausanne specifically — not “Europe” generally — matters to that plan.
Keep it under a page. Every sentence should be doing one of those three jobs — nothing decorative, nothing generic enough to paste into an application for a different university.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Treating it as a two-step process. The single biggest error: applicants sometimes wait for a UNIL admission letter before thinking about the scholarship, or apply to the program and grant separately. There is no separate step. Miss the scholarship deadline and you’ve missed your shot at the grant entirely, even if your program application would otherwise be fine.
Writing a generic motivation letter. Reviewers read a lot of these. A letter that could be sent to any university, with the school’s name swapped in, reads as exactly that. If your letter doesn’t reference something specific to the program — a professor, a course structure, a research focus — it signals you didn’t do the homework.
Underestimating the language requirement. C1 is genuinely high — not “conversational,” not “I did a semester abroad.” If your test score is B2, don’t submit and hope; use the time before the deadline to retest instead.
Where To Apply
Official program and application page University of Lausanne
Goodluck
