Vanier Scholarship
Quick Facts
The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) program is designed to attract and retain world-class doctoral students by offering them a significant financial award to assist them during their studies at Canadian universities. Vanier Scholars demonstrate leadership skills and a high standard of scholarly achievement in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and health-related fields. Canadian and international students are eligible to be nominated for a Vanier Scholarship, which is valued at $50,000 per year for up to three years.
11:59pm on Friday, September 16, 2011
Eligibility
- To be considered for a Vanier Scholarship, a student must be nominated by a Canadian university. Vanier Scholarships must be held by the student at the university that nominated them. The scholarships are not transferable: they may not be taken to another university
- Applicants do not have to be registered as doctoral students at the time of application, but must be registered as doctoral students at a Canadian university when they take up the Vanier Scholarship
- Canadian citizens, landed immigrants (permanent residents), and international students are all eligible for Vanier Scholarships
- Students who have held or are currently holding Tri-Agency scholarship funding for their doctoral program are not eligible to apply
Please see the Vanier Scholarship website for complete eligibility criteria.
Evaluation Criteria
Nominees will be evaluated and selected based on the following three criteria, which will be weighted equally by the peer review committees. However, the final selection board recommendation on awardees will be based solely on the leadership component of the applications. The three selection criteria are:
- academic excellence
- research potential
- leadership
Please see the Vanier Scholarship website for complete evaluation criteria.
Procedures
Current and prospective students will complete their Vanier application using ResearchNet, an online application system. Applicants to UBC must submit their complete application package via ResearchNet by 11:59pm (Vancouver time) on Friday, September 16, 2011.
To apply, applicants must do the following by the deadline noted above:
- notify the chosen graduate program that they intend to apply for the Vanier Scholarship. A listing of UBC graduate programs and contacts is available at: www.grad.ubc.ca/prospective-students/graduate-degree-programs.
- provide official transcripts for all post-secondary studies up to August 31, 2011.
- transcripts are to be submitted to the applicant's graduate program, not the Faculty of Graduate Studies
- the graduate program may have some of the applicant's transcripts on file already; if so, the applicant must confirm with the graduate program which transcripts the program has and will provide to support the Vanier application, and which transcripts the applicant must still provide to the graduate program
- if the applicant needs to provide any transcripts in support of their Vanier application, the graduate program must receive the original, official transcripts in a sealed envelope from the issuing institution
- questions about transcript requirements should be directed to the graduate program
- request letters of support from three referees
- two letters from referees assessing the applicant's academic excellence, research potential and demonstrated and potential leadership ability are submitted electronically through ResearchNet by the referee
- the Leadership Reference Letter is provided to the applicant, who uploads the letter to his or her electronic
application file - applicants should provide potential referees with the Vanier selection criteria guidelines
- submit a completed Vanier application via ResearchNet
The Faculty of Graduate Studies will provide electronic copies of applications submitted by their current and prospective students to UBC graduate programs shortly after the student application deadline.
Transcripts for applicants should be collected by graduate programs. Each application will need to include applicant's transcripts for all post-secondary studies up to August 31, 2011. Note that SISC printouts of UBC transcripts are not accepted by the Tri-Agencies. Therefore, nominations for students who have studied at UBC prior to September 1, 2011, will need to include up-to-date UBC transcripts. Graduate programs should develop their own policies regarding transcript submission for applicants.
Graduate programs are required to review and rank their applicants and submit their nominees to the Faculty of Graduate Studies by 4:00pm on Wednesday, October 5, 2011.
Quotas (the maximum number of nominations that each graduate program may submit to the Faculty of Graduate Studies) for the Vanier competitions are provided in the quota document.
A complete nomination package will consist of the following:
- Nomination form for each nominee, to be completed by the graduate program. Format: Microsoft Word document (not PDF), with a separate form for each nominee
- A complete set of transcripts (both sides scanned, arranged in order from most recent to oldest) for each nominated application. Format: PDF file, with a separate file for each nominee
Both the nomination forms and transcript files are to be sent by e-mail to graduate.awards@ubc.ca.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies will convene an adjudication committee composed of UBC faculty members to review nominations submitted by graduate programs and select UBC's nominees to the national competition. This committee is made up of three subcommittees, one for each of the federal funding agencies.
Canadian universities each have a limit to the number of nominations they may submit to the Vanier Scholarship competition. In the fall 2011 competition, UBC expects to submit the following number of nominations to the national competition:
- CIHR – 21
- NSERC – 19
- SSHRC – 19
For details about the adjudication process at the national competition level, please see the Vanier Scholarship website.
Further Information
For detailed eligibility criteria, selection criteria, and links to application materials, please see the Vanier Scholarship website.
