Why I Got Waitlisted For The Lester B. Pearson Scholarship at University of Toronto

Today I will be sharing my experience of applying for the Lester B. Pearson Scholarship at University of Toronto. I applied to U of T Scarborough and U of T Mississauga for the fall of 2021. Luckily, I received acceptance letters from both of the campuses with some good scholarships, but when I applied for the Lester B. Pearson scholarship program, I was waitlisted first then rejected a month later.

In the last post, I talked about the Lester B. Pearson scholarship, it’s eligibility criteria, application process and my tips to get accepted in great detail. If you don’t know about the Lester B. Pearson scholarship, I recommend you read that post before going over this one as it contains basic, contextual information needed to understand this one.

Check Here 👉 How To Get Full Scholarship at University of Toronto as an International Student

Now, in this post, I’ll not only be sharing with you my experience of applying for the scholarship, but also the mistakes I made which got me rejected. I will go over all of the mistakes I made when preparing and going through the scholarship application process of Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship and will give you valuable tips/ advice to follow so you learn from my mistakes and not repeat them as you apply to this scholarship or any other scholarship in Canada, USA etc. Also, do stick around till the end of the post as I will be answering some of the most frequently asked questions about the scholarship.

So without further a do, let’s dive right in. But before that, if you prefer video over text. I suggest you watch my Lester B. Pearson Scholarship Experience Video down below 👇

---

My Experience

When I was in grade 12th I got to know about the Lester B. Pearson Scholarship Program from one of my friends who was planning to pursue his undergrad studies in Canada.

At that time, I knew that there was no chance for me to study abroad if I didn’t get a 100% scholarship from any university. I was only looking at and researching about the need-blind scholarships in the US, so I was familiar with U.S. scholarship application process, where you need to first apply to the university through the Common App then you need to fill out the financial aid application.

So the U.S. scholarship application process was in my head when I started researching about the Lester B. Pearson scholarship. I read about the scholarship, it’s eligibility criteria and the benefits that it offers, but what I didn’t read properly was the application process. I looked at the student application deadline which was January 18th and assumed that the scholarship process is similar to that of US universities and that I only I need to fill an application before January 18th.

Now, in December 2019, when I returned to the same Lester B. Pearson scholarship page, I was shocked to see that I had missed school nomination part just because of my assumptions and lack of proper research. One of the reasons for this was that I was preparing for my IB exams and was too stressed about the Internal Assessments.

Now, the only option left was to wait another year and then apply for this scholarship. Next year, I was in my gap year, I didn’t want to miss the chance and so I read absolutely everything about the scholarship even the pages where they discuss previous Lester B. Pearson Scholars. Yes, I read each one of them.

My school was not registered to nominate a student for the Lester B Pearson scholarship, so in September 2020, I asked my school principal to submit the School Participation Form. Then, It took a month for U of T to verify my school.

Now alongside, my U of T application I was also researching about writing my common app essays and was collecting documents for the financial aid application.

In November 2020, I filled out the OUAC Application and submitted it.

Because I was the first student from my school going through the U.S. and Canadian application process at the same time and I didn’t have a counselor to warn me, in December 2020, what I didn’t expect, actually happened? I had no time and there were literally 20-30 essays waiting to be completed before the 1st week of January 2021.

So I dedicated the whole December and early January in writing down my essays and luckily I was able to complete all of them including the Lester B. Pearson scholarship essays which I submitted at 9 am on January 19th 2021 even though the deadline for the student application was January 18th 2021.

I took a massive risk here, I am Indian and here we follow the Indian Standard Time which is nine and a half hours ahead of Toronto time, so yea I took a risk and assumed that U of T will follow Toronto Time Zone for the student application deadline and luckily they did. I got another 9 and a half hours to finish the application even though it wasn’t safe to assume that.

Then nothing happened until late March, when I received an email from the scholarship committee saying that I had been waitlisted for the scholarship because they received 2,200 nominations from all over the world and it was a challenge for them to select 37 scholars.

This is the Waitlist Email I received from one of the awards officers:

Dear Zohair,

Thank you for applying to the Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship program at the University of Toronto.  We are currently in the process of selecting our recipients.

This year, we have seen an immense increase in the number of applicants to our scholarship program.  Amongst that group, there is an exceptionally strong pool of students of which you are a part.  Due to the limited number of scholarships we can offer, your application has been waitlisted.

As we continue to make offers, we will reevaluate your application and expect to provide you with our final decision by the end of April.

Thank you again for your application to the Lester B. Pearson Scholarship program and your interest in the University of Toronto. 

This is the Rejection Email I received from the same officer:

Dear Zohair,

Thank you again for applying to the Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship program at the University of Toronto. We received an overwhelming number of outstanding applications for our program this year. Not only did those applications reflect exceptional academics, they also captured great personal achievements, proven leadership, and school and community involvement.

With over 2,200 nominations from schools all across the globe, our selection process was highly competitive. The overall excellence of those nominees who applied made our task of selecting only 37 recipients that much more challenging. Unfortunately, your application was not among those that were chosen this year for the program.  As we have chosen our recipients, we are now closing the waitlist.

The selection committee would like to assure you that the number of worthy applications we reviewed was far greater than the number of scholarships we are able to award. We are honoured by the calibre of student our program has attracted and are sincerely grateful for your interest.

In the unlikely event we receive notice from a recipient later this summer that they will not be able to attend, we may be able to make an additional offer; however, we are no longer able to select any new recipients at this time. 

We hope that, whatever your plans are for the coming year, you will have a rich and rewarding experience. If those plans include the University of Toronto, we would like to extend our warmest welcome.

Now, do you see the competition here, this scholarship has an acceptance rate of 1.68% which is even below Harvard‘s acceptance rate for the Class of 2025. I think this will only get lower because more and more schools are now nominating students for this scholarship. Therefore, here my advice would be to YES apply for the Lester B Pearson scholarship and don’t let the low acceptance rate discourage you but to also BE REALISTIC and not rely on this scholarship alone. If you can’t afford U of T’s tuition, consider applying to other scholarships by U of T or other organizations which can lighten your financial burden.

By the way, if anybody asked me to describe my Lester B. Pearson Scholarship Experience in a few words, it would be

Applied, Waited, and Rejected.

Yea, that was pretty much my story which could have been a lot different had I not made the following mistakes.

Not Knowing the Exact Scholarship Application Process and its Deadlines.

Basically, I missed the opportunity to apply for the scholarship in Grade 12th which was in 2019 just because I didn’t know the exact application process and only relied on my assumptions. The cost of this was that I missed the school nomination deadline and had to wait one more year to apply.

The next year, it was 2020 and guess what happened? U of T’s scholarship application process got immensely competitive compared to previous years because of Covid-19 and increasing number of students deciding to take a gap year. Had I applied for the scholarship in 2019, it would’ve been a lot less competitive.

Not being aware of the exact process was actually one of my biggest mistakes when I applied for this scholarship, that’s why I created the How to get 100% Scholarship at U of T Video, in which I have researched and shared everything an international students needs to know about the Lester B. Pearson scholarship, so anyone who watches that video gets to know about this scholarship without missing out on anything 👇

Not having Strong, Impactful Extracurriculars in Computer Science

None of my extracurricular activities was directly related to the field Computer Science such as developing a mobile app, doing an internship, learning a programming language or building some sort of software, but most of my activities were focused on community service like volunteering, organizing clothes collection drive, teaching kids from rural areas etc. which were good enough to convince the scholarship committee to at least waitlist me but not convincing enough to make me a Lester B. Pearson scholar for Computer Science.

If you look at my extracurricular activities which were

1. Leading my school’s service project in which we raise funds and donate food packets to 800 families.
2. Being a member of student council for 3 years, leading it for 1 year.
3. Having a Blog with more than 500,000 views.
4. Having a YouTube channel with more than 5 Million views.

Now, do you see any extracurricular related to CS here? Blog and YouTube channel are indirectly related to it, but not as directly as a scholarship committee would want to see.

Therefore, start engaging in extracurricular activities that are strong, impactful, serve others in your school and community and are directly related to the field you wanna pursue at the University.

For example, if you are planning to pursue CS, you can start a coding club, do an internship, participate in hackathons and other programming competitions, develop an app which addresses a problem of a group of people and before writing down your scholarship application essays, list down all the extracurriculars you’ve engaged in and think about them.

What does that activity mean to you?

How did it shaped you and your personality?

How did it contribute or made an impact on the lives of others?

U of T wants to see that you are able to create positive changes in your surrounding communities. If you are able to take your profile to the national or international level, it’s great. But U of T expects Lester B Pearson scholars to be interested a breadth of things and use their interests to create positive, impactful changes even though they might seem small to others.

Here, I would also say that do something you are interested in and you enjoy doing it, because even if you don’t receive this award, you’ll be content and happy that you didn’t waste your time engaging in things you didn’t enjoy doing, just for a scholarship program which you didn’t get in.

I Started Brainstorming and Writing the Essays Very Late.

Now you might be saying that, “Hey Zohair, you were in you gap year, so how come you started writing your essays so late?” This was because I did a lot of research on writing good scholarship essays instead of utilizing my time to actually brainstorm and write good essays.

As I said before, I was also applying to 12 other U.S. Universities and so from mid-December till the end of first week of January, I was extremely busy with their application essays. It was only in the second week of January that I managed to start writing essays for the Lester B. Pearson Scholarship, which was actually the last and only week I had to brainstorm, write, refine and submit all the essays for the scholarship.

Therefore, my friends, start as early as possible, do not wait for the perfect moment and do not wait for yourself to know everything about writing good essays, take imperfect action and start self-reflecting and brainstorming for your essays early on, trust me, it will help you so much.

Recycling and Re-using my Common App Essay for the Student Scholarship Application

This mistake is actually a result of my third mistake of procrastination and starting out late. I had no time to write fresh and new essays, and so I took a shortcut and recycled my common app essays for the Lester B. Pearson scholarship prompts.

Now, I am not against repurposing and reusing of essays; in fact, it is a great strategy when you are applying for several Ivy League Schools which have similar questions. But this recycling and reusing of essays does not work when the context and demands of the questions are very different from the already written out essay.

In this case, reusing your old essays and making some changes, leads to a disaster because you are trying to mold your old answer in different ways to meet the expectation of the new question. There is nothing wrong in using the same theme or ideas you used in the previous essays.

So what I did exactly was that I used my common app essay which was basically a reflection of my high school life, for the Lester B. Scholarship essay prompt about “an experience that changed my perspective.”

In a nutshell, I equated my multitude of experiences in high school to one experience that changed my life and what happened next? a good, decent essay but unrelated to the question and the expectation of the scholarship committee, which I think ultimately harmed my profile and thus the likelihood of receiving the scholarship.

So again, if you start early on you’ll have much more quality time to brainstorm, write, edit new essays without the need to recycle the old ones. And even if you do end up recycling, I would suggest you to take feedback for your essays from someone who has reviewed scholarship essays before. This brings me to my fifth and last mistake.

Reviewing all the Essays Myself and Not Asking Others to Review them.

This is by far the most lethal mistakes you can make especially if your creative writing skills are not great. Because you are applying to great universities, they expect you to have great writing skills.

I basically had no time to get my essays reviewed and even if I had, I wouldn’t have given my essays for a review because I was scared, afraid, ashamed of sharing my essays with others.

Don’t be like me, nobody is going to judge you for this, they’ll read and give you valuable feedback and after a month or two they will forget it, but your work will get done.

Another barrier was that there was actually no one who knew me and could give me valuable feedback on my essays, but if you are in this situation I would recommend you share your essays with an authentic online admission counselor who can provide editing services to you for free or for a few dollars.

It is worth spending that amount to get to know your mistakes, because your essays are the deciding factor. Seriously, they can get you Accepted, Waitlisted or Rejected.

Your essays are your only voice the scholarship committee has and if it is not coming out the way you want it to and the way the scholarship committee expects it, you’re not going to get accepted.

Common Questions

Now, I will be answering some questions about the Lester B. Pearson scholarship that you guys have asked.

Can the school nominate you before you’ve applied to U of T?

Yes they can nominate you before you’ve applied to U of T or after you’ve applied to U of T. For example, your school nominated you in October 2021, but you submitted your OUAC Application in December 2021. You will still receive an email to fill the student scholarship application because in the student nomination form, U of T asks the school for the student’s email address and later they use that email address to connect the scholarship application with your main application. So be careful to only apply with the email address that your school has given in the nomination form.

When will you receive the Scholarship Decision?

Generally, all the scholarship applicants are notified by the end of April every year.

I have an average GPA, is there any chance of someone like me to receive this scholarship?

Yes, Absolutely. There is no one factor which can make you a recipient of this scholarship. If your grades are not excellent, don’t worry, focus on the other factors that can get you this scholarship such as your extracurricular activities, leadership positions, high quality essays. I would say apply and don’t let your average grades deter you from applying.

I have graduated High School, Can I Apply?

Yes you can apply even if you have completed Grade 12th, just check you eligible graduation date on U of T’s website. If you planning to apply this year, you can only apply if you have graduated after May 2021 which is June 2021 or later.

Now, if you still have any questions about U of T’s admission process or Lester B. Pearson scholarship, do comment them down below, I’ll try my best to reply to all of them.

Conclusion

In this post, I went over all of the following things: Lester B. Pearson Scholarship Acceptance Rate, Advice, Competition, Extracurricular activities for computer science majors and aspirants, my extracurricular activities, managing time when applying for the scholarship, brainstorming and writing the scholarship essays, researching on writing essays, repurposing and reusing essays for the scholarship essays prompts, importance of feedback on scholarship essays, importance of reviewing essays, getting to know your essays mistakes and corrections, student scholarship application, student scholarship application form deadline, school nomination form and filling the student nomination form.

I hope you learned something from my experience of going through the application process. Hope you don’t make these mistakes when you are applying for the scholarship.

Don’t forget to share this video with others, so they too can benefit from this.

Also, make sure you check out my YouTube Channel for awesome, quality content like this. Don’t forget to Subscribe, haha !!

Thank you so much for sticking around till the end.

See you in the next one. Good Bye and Take care 😁