The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Hi. I’m a UK citizen who wants to apply. Is there any other British citizens on this forum? If yes, please share your clearance and student visa process. Thanks.

Wow, I didn't even know non US citizens could apply. I wonder how long that rule has been around.

British Citizen wrote:Hi. I’m a UK citizen who wants to apply. Is there any other British citizens on this forum? If yes, please share your clearance and student visa process. Thanks.

You have to be a US citizen to get a clearance. You must have and maintain a clearance to have the scholarship.

You have to be a US Citizen to work as a US civil servant in any branch of the US government. Additionally as CSMajor said you also need to be a US citizen to maintain clearance.

https://smart.asee.org/apply_/applicati ... mographics It says UK...so maybe you can do some things?

I know British citizens and citizens of some other countries can apply. We all know the American way is to have cattle calls for everything, which will be a waste of time and effort for most. I don’t want my time wasted applying and doing the GRE if I don’t stand a chance. I have asked many people and no one has given me a definitive answer. I don’t think they’ve selected citizens of other countries, so I was getting the run around and cut and paste answers. This blog was my last resort. Don’t think I should bother anymore at this point.

Thanks.

I think this might be a new addition to the program. I applied last year and I remember citizenship being a requirement. So you likely can't find any other non-US citizens with the scholarship because they just opened it to non-US citizens.

Yeah I'm 99% sure that last year it wasn't open for non-citizens I was surprised when I saw that on the link. I mean if you get accepted to a US university I am sure that you could easily manage the visa process as a UK citizen. I think that's separate from the actual scholarship though. SMART doesn't really help with much besides support payments.

I also think you have just as much of a likelihood to get selected as anyone else - otherwise why else would they open it to the other countries? I don't think that'll come into play in making it to further rounds it's going to be completely based on you as student and being in a major that is needed for the sponsoring facilities. So you have like a 12% chance of being accepted just like everyone else on this forum had/has. I would go for it if it's something you're interested in the terms of the scholarship. Even a 12% likelihood is worth the effort!!!

Looking at the list, it looks like they've opened it up to FVEY (FIVE EYES - US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) which is very interesting. Not sure what the clearance process would look like for that, but I can tell you that my facility would never pick someone up, due to some things being NOFORN.

OP, if you're really interested, I'd contact the SFs you're interested in before applying, to be sure they'd actually take you.