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Published: 24 Jan 2024 1,248 views
The Government of the Slovak Republic approved the establishment of the National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic for the support of mobility of students, PhD students, university teachers, researchers and artists in 2005. The National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic (NSP) is financed by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic from the state budget of the Slovak Republic.
The National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic supports mobility of international students, PhD students, university teachers, researchers and artists for scholarship stays at higher education institutions and research organisations in Slovakia.
| Application Deadline | 31 Oct 2024 |
| Country to study | Slovakia |
| School to study | |
| Type | Postgraduate |
| Course to study | View courses |
| Sponsor | Government of Slovak Republic |
| Gender | Men and Women |
|
Category: |
Monthly |
|
a) university student of the second level of higher education |
620 EUR |
|
b) PhD student |
1025,50 EUR |
|
c) university teacher/researcher/artist: |
|
|
1025,50 EUR |
|
1 370 EUR |
|
1 470 EUR |
Note:
The scholarship is intended to cover international scholarship holders’ living costs, i.e. the costs related to staying in Slovakia (food, accommodation, etc.), during their study, research/artistic or teaching stay at universities and in research organisations in Slovakia.
The scholarship holder can ask for assistance concerning accommodation and formalities related to entering and staying in the territory of the Slovak Republic either his/her host institution, or he/she can handle all the necessities him-/herself.
Scholarship holders whose scholarship stay in Slovakia lasts longer than 90 days and who are citizens of countries outside the European Union, European Economic Area and Switzerland, who need for their stay in Slovakia a temporary residence permit, are obliged to submit to the foreign police office a confirmation that they do not suffer from any disease threatening public health within 30 days from being awarded the temporary residence. Scholarship holders will be reimbursed the costs related to medical examination and issuing of this confirmation, up to 250 € per scholarship holder, after delivering original of the bill issued by the respective medical institution to SAIA, n. o., in Bratislava. A list of competent medical institutions will be provided to scholarship holders by the respective foreign police offices in Slovakia. Scholarship holders are obliged to deliver the bill to SAIA, n. o., in Bratislava within the deadline for submitting the final report; otherwise, they will lose their right for the reimbursement of the costs.
In addition, students and PhD students [eligible applicants under the category A) and B)] can be awarded a travel allowance (travel grant, which is a separate component of the scholarship), if they apply for it along with their scholarship application. Travel allowance is awarded as a lump sum and it will be paid to the scholarship holder at the end of his/her stay together with the last scholarship payment. Travel allowance amount depends on the distance (in a direct line) between applicant's place of residence (the permanent address; resp. address of home institution) and the place of his/her stay in Slovakia (the address of the host institution)[5]:
Eligible applicants for a scholarship in the framework of the NSP:
A) students who:
All 3 conditions must be met. This category does not apply to doctoral (PhD) studies (or their equivalent).
B) PhD students whose higher education or scientific training takes place outside Slovakia and who are accepted by a public, private or state higher education institution or a research institution in Slovakia eligible to carry out a doctoral study programme[2] (e.g. the Slovak Academy of Sciences) for an academic mobility[1] to study/conduct research/artistic stay in Slovakia.
C) international university teachers, researchers and artists who are invited to a teaching/research/artistic stay in Slovakia by an institution with a valid certificate of eligibility to carry out research and development, which is not a business company[3] and it has its seat in Slovakia.
[1] Section 58a of the Act No. 131/2002 on higher education institutions, as amended.
[2] External education institution according to the Act No. 131/2002 on higher education institutions, as amended.
[3] Legal entity according to the section 7 letters a) – d) of the Act No. 172/2005 on organisation of state research and development funding, as amended, which has a valid certificate of eligibility to carry out research and development according to the section 26a article 11 or article 12 of the same Act – i.e. public, private or state universities, research institutions eligible to carry out a doctoral (PhD) study programme (i.e. external education institutions), Slovak Academy of Sciences and its institutes, departmental research institutes or non-governmental organisations carrying out research and development.
Note: If the study/research/artistic stay must last at least 1 month, it is necessary to ensure the length of the stay is for 1 full calendar month (e.g. March 5 - April 4). The same applies for calculating the duration of the stay when assessing the fulfillment of the condition for the minimum length of stay in other cases, if this length is determined in months (e.g. February 5 - June 4 for a 4-month stay).
Citizens of any country in the world (except the citizens of Slovakia) can apply for a scholarship stay in Slovakia in the framework of the NSP.
Re-applying for the scholarship:
In case of re-applying for a scholarship, the application can only be approved if between the deadline by which the applicant re-submitted the application and the deadline by which the NSP scholarship was last awarded and received, at least 2 years (including) have passed.
Exception to this condition can be only in cases worth of special consideration, especially if the previous stay supported by the scholarship was affected by an extraordinary circumstance caused by force majeure (e.g. pandemic, military conflict, etc.).
Scholarships and/or travel allowances (travel grant) are not legally enforceable; meeting of all the formal requirements of the programme according to the respective call for applications, applicant’s quality, content of applicant’s proposed stay and its necessity, and the NSP budget availability related to the respective call for applications, have an impact on granting the scholarship from the NSP sources.
The applicant is responsible for the final completeness of the application and for the correctness of the information provided in the application and its annexes; due to sufficient time for the preparation of the application in the period between the opening of the electronic application system and the deadline for submitting the applications, as well as to the applicant's declaration when submitting the application, that all information provided in the application is complete, actual and true and that the application is complete and contains all the required annexes and documents, the scholarship Programme Administrator is not obliged to give the applicant an opportunity to amend the application (the application is therefore assessed as submitted by the applicant).
SAIA, n. o., as the scholarship Programme Administrator, is responsible for the administration of the selection process. The Programme Administrator acts within each selection in a way to ensure equal treatment of applicants during the respective selection process.
The administrator will assess whether the applications meet the formal requirements of the programme on the day of the application deadline. The administrator may reject applications for formal reasons:
When making its decision the administrator may consider whether that fact may have an essential influence on the content assessment of the application. The administrator may consult his/her findings with the Selection Committee. The administrator shall also take into account the recommendations and requirements of the Selection Committee from previous selection rounds.
If necessary, when verifying the information provided by the applicant in the application and its attachments, the Programme Administrator may request additional documents confirming the stated facts while ensuring equal treatment of applicants. This does not affect the applicant's obligation to provide complete, up-to-date and true data and to submit a complete application by the application date.
Applications that have not been rejected by the administrator for formal reasons will be forwarded to the Selection Committee for further selection.
Selection of scholarship holders is carried out by the Selection Committee appointed by the Minister of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic. The Committee focuses mostly on:
Within the framework of a specific selection, the Selection Committee determines the order of applications in the respective categories, while, if necessary, taking into account the field background of the applications and other relevant facts, it may separately assess subgroups of applications within the assessed categories and determine an individual order for these subgroups. After evaluating the applications in a specific category or subgroup, the Selection Committee determines which applications within the given selection meet the expectation of high quality, and from these applications proposes which applications should be awarded a scholarship, taking into account the available funds of the program, the quality of the applications, and it may also take into account the expected success rate of applicants in a specific category/subgroup with respect to the total number of applications. The Selection Committee can indicate other conditions for awarding the scholarship, e.g. grant a scholarship under the condition of shortening the length of the scholarship support (i.e. shortening the number of scholarship months), documenting or explaining the facts that the Selection Committee considered necessary in the application assessment process, etc.; the fulfilment of the conditions (or their acceptance by the applicant) in the case of a scholarship award is verified by the Programme Administrator. For the purposes of an efficient, effective and useful using of financial funds for a scholarship support from the program, the Selection Committee may decide to create a reserve list of applicants for a scholarship (resp. a list of substitutes), who in case of sufficient financial resources may be awarded a scholarship additionally, after the meeting of the Selection Committee; the reserve list of applicants expires on the day of the next scholarship application deadline.
The Selection Committee may, with special regard, consider applications submitted by applicants who were awarded a scholarship but who have not started their approved scholarship stay due to force majeure (e.g. the pandemic, war, etc.) or had to shorten their stay due to force majeure, or under the influence of a situation caused by force majeure, the planned purpose could not be fully implemented. In such cases, compared to other applicants, the Selection Committee may proceed in a specific way, if it is considered necessary in the respective call for applications. However, any such application will be assessed individually in accordance with the terms of the programme and must be relevant in terms of quality; it is not possible to approve such applications automatically solely because of the prior approval of the scholarship and the fact, that it has been negatively influenced by force majeure.
Any applicant who has reasonable grounds to suspect that the administrator or the Selection Committee made a mistake in the process of administering and assessing applications submitted within the respective application deadline is entitled to file a motion to investigate the case no later than 1 month after publishing the results of the selection of applications submitted within that deadline. Claims have to be submitted by the applicant in writing and addressed to SAIA, n. o., as the organization administering the programme. The claim must contain the applicant's identification data, the respective application number, reasons for objections (including facts which according to the applicant led to the mistake). SAIA, n. o., after reviewing the claim will inform the applicant of the result of the review process, usually within 1 month from the submission of the claim.
Scholarship applications are submitted online at www.scholarships.sk. Online application system is opened at least 6 weeks prior to the application deadline. Applications can be filled in only in case that the online application system has already been opened.
Note: Applicants are recommended not to submit their applications at the last moment. Number of operations executed within the last minutes prior to the application deadline may influence the reaction time of the application system. Please, keep that in mind, in order not to miss the application deadline. In such case, the Programme Administrator does not take any responsibility if the applicant does not submit his/her application.
Applicants are allowed to submit (fill in) applications and the required attachments in Slovak or English language only (in case of documents written in other languages[7] the application must contain the original documents together with their official translation into Slovak or English language, resp. the applicant may submit a translation certified by the institution that issued the respective document instead; if, due to extraordinary circumstances caused by force majeure, it is not possible to provide an official translation, the scholarship Programme Administrator may also accept unofficial translations made by the applicant herself/himself, but if such an applicant will be awarded a scholarship, before the official letter of award is issued and sent to him/her, he/she will be obliged to submit an official translation corresponding to the unofficial translation – the deadline for submitting the official document is to be set by the scholarship Programme Administrator).
[7] According to the current legislation, it is not necessary to translate documents issued in the Czech language.
In case of documents, that are attached to the application and that are issued by a person other than the applicant (e.g. recommendation letters, confirmations of study, diploma/diploma supplement/state examination certificate, admission/invitation letter) it is necessary to upload the scan of these documents to the online application. The applicant is obliged to keep and archive all original documents that he/she has attached to the online application in electronic format at the time of award of the scholarship and before issuing the Letter of Award at the latest (if not agreed with the host institution otherwise), and if requested, to submit these originals (or certified copies of these originals) to the Programme Administrator.
According to the terms and conditions, a signature is a handwritten signature (not a typewritten one), or an officially verifiable electronic signature. Confirmation is an officially issued document that contains the signature of the person who issued the document or electronically verifiable data as well (e.g. QR code or link referring to a document on the official webpage of an educational institution or national authority).
Exceptionally, i.e. in the event of extraordinary circumstances caused by force majeure (not the fault of the applicant and the person / institution that has issued the requested document), may also be accepted the official documents without the signature of the person who has issued them (resp. the official confirmation of the institution), if the content of the document is in line with these terms and indicates that it is a statement of a relevant legal or physical person (e.g. e-mail from the respective person with the required content or an informative extract from the higher education institution's electronic system without a signature from the responsible person, etc.). If such an applicant has been awarded a scholarship, he/she is obliged to submit documents signed by the responsible person, which correspond by their content to the documents submitted in the application, to the scholarship Programme Administrator at the latest by the deadline set by the scholarship Programme Administrator. A Binding scholarship offer will be sent to the approved applicant only after this obligation has been fulfilled.
If the applicant is reapplying for a scholarship because his/her previous stay supported by the scholarship was substantially influenced by extraordinary circumstances caused by force majeure (e.g. due to force majeure the stay had to be terminated earlier, or the stay was completed, but the planned programme could not be fully implemented e.g. due to the closure of the institutions as a preventive measure, or the stay could not be conducted at all and for that reason the applicant cancelled the scholarship which had been awarded to him/her) and he/she wishes to continue or resume the approved stay, he/she is required to indicate all facts and extraordinary circumstances explicitly in his/her application.
In order to take any extraordinary circumstances during the selection process into account, the applicant is required to describe and explain these circumstances in detail in the application (e.g. in a separate document attached, etc.) and the administrator will assess their possible impact during the formal evaluation of the applications for the purposes of the selection process.
The application must be submitted on-line by the application deadline – i.e. the applicant must fill in the online application, attach all required documents in the prescribed form and submit the application by clicking the "SEND" button (the application can only be submitted if all fields are filled in and all required attachments uploaded).
Note: Applicant should receive a scan of his/her admission/invitation letter issued by his/her host institution in Slovakia, since he/she should attach it to his/her online application. Without the admission/invitation the applicant cannot submit the online application, i.e. his/her application will not be further assessed. The original of the admission/invitation letter has to be submitted only when the applicant has been awarded a scholarship. Before the Letter of Award has been issued to an approved applicant, he/she or the Slovak host institution, is obliged to submit to the Programme Administrator the original of the acceptance/invitation letter, which will correspond to the acceptance/invitation letter submitted as part of the online application, no later than by the deadline set by the Programme Administrator. Otherwise, the non-delivery of this document will be evaluated as a loss of interest in the scholarship stay on the part of the approved applicant, or loss of interest in the scholarship holder on the part of the host institution. Based on this fact, SAIA, n. o., has right to cancel the scholarship stay.
For more details visit: Government of Slovak website.
