APIIT Offers Scholarships worth Rs. 1.2 million Merit Scholarships 2008

The Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT), a leading higher education institute in Sri Lanka awards 10 full scholarships for academically promising and financially needy students. The selected students will follow a full-time study programme in Computing or Business Management at the APIIT City Campus in Colombo leading to a degree awarded by Staffordshire University in the UK. Each scholarship is worth more than Rs 1.2 million and covers the full cost of education during the entirety of the study programme including the fees payable to Staffordshire University.

The ‘APIIT Merit Scholarships’ Scheme is a joint initiative between the World Bank funded ‘Improving Relevance and Quality of Undergraduate Education’ (IRQUE) Project and APIIT. The primary objective of the scholarship scheme is to support academically deserving students with financial difficulties to pursue higher education at APIIT. It is also expected that the scholarship scheme would help to balance the demographic distribution of students at APIIT. In order to meet the latter objective, priority is given for applicants from outside Colombo and Kandy districts. Thus, the district, parental income and language competence are considered in addition to A/L performance in the final selection.

APIIT Merit Scholarships will be offered for the third consecutive year. This year too the competition for the 10 awards is high. Consequently, the main criterion for short listing was taken as having a Z score greater than 1.5. Interestingly, many applicants who were assured of a place in the public universities have shown interest in obtaining a merit scholarship to pursue their studies at APIIT. This demonstrates the increasing popularity of the highly recognized British degree programmes APIIT offers and high employability of APIIT graduates.

Of the 10 scholarships, 6 have been awarded for Computing and 4 for Business Management. The scholars in Computing will follow a BSc (Hons) degree in Computing with specialisation in Software Engineering, Web Development or Multimedia. The scholars in Business will follow a BA (Hons) degree in Business Administration. The scholars will commence their academic programmes with the new intake of students on 24th February, 2009. All APIIT degree programmes are conducted in English medium and the students have the option of taking an industrial placement in their third year to obtain industry relevant practical experience before graduation.

The ‘APIIT Merit Scholarships’ scheme is proving to be a great success in achieving its objective of providing opportunities to deserving rural students to study for a British degree. The 10 scholars selected last year are all doing well academically passing examinations with good grades. Undoubtedly, the scholarship programme would contribute towards the APIIT mission of producing internationally recognized computing and business professionals who will meet the demands of the industry and commerce and contribute to the socio-economic development of our country.