How to Apply for Financial Aid or a Scholarship on Coursera.
Greetings, I am writing this for those who would like to learn career digital skills and earn certification (i.e Digital Marketing, Data Science, Data Analytics, Website Design, Project Management, UI/UX, Machine Learning, Programming, Networking, Blockchain, and lots more) on a digital learning platform like Coursera but can’t afford the $ USD monthly learning fees. This article will guide you step to step process of how to apply for Coursera financial aid which will enable you to learn your preferred digital career course for free after approval.
Coursera offers a wide range of learning, this includes digital skills, Degrees like Associate’s Degrees, Bachelor's Degrees, and Master's Degrees and they offer certification after completion. Coursera partners with more than 271 top leading universities and companies to bring flexible and job-relevant online learning to individuals and organizations worldwide. They have pricing segmented for each course at an affordable price but they also have an option called “financial aid”, this is for those who can’t afford the course fee, this aid allows approved applicants to help access the course for free, and this article is to guide you step by step on how to apply to get Coursera financial aid approval.
To get approval or receive Coursera financial aid or a scholarship, you must write an appeal, and fill out an application that includes information about your educational background, career goals, and financial circumstances.
STEP 1
Firstly you need a Coursera account, if you already have an account with Coursera, this step is optional for you but if not kindly visit the Coursera webpage to register. How to register is simple, once you are on the homepage of the webpage, just click on Join for Free at the right top edge of the homepage, you can sign up fill in your necessary information, or sign up with your Google or Facebook account.
See the below image.
N.B: You can only apply for financial aid on the Coursera website using your computer, application through the mobile app is not allowed.
STEP 2
Select your preferred course to study e.g “Data science”, to do that, kindly utilize the search icon on the homepage to search for your career course of choice, select the course will lead you to the course page where you have full details of the selected course, annotation of the course description, what you will learn and gain, course segmentation and resources. I will advise you to take your time glancing through the course page to have a proper understanding of your chosen career course before you could start with the study.
N.B: Coursera typically gives a 7-day full-access free trial before they could start charging you every month till the course completion, which means if you can complete your selected course within that given 7 days, there would be no need to pay or apply for financial aid. however, course completion is nearly impossible within 7 days, and to continue with your learning after 7 days of trial exceeded you will need to pay or apply for financial aid.
See the below image.
STEP 3
Apply for financial aid, here we go the main purpose of this article writing, to apply click on the ‘financial aid’ placed and highlighted under the 7 days free trial phrase on the selected career digital course page you wanted to apply for aid. For example, I choose Introduction to Data Science as you can see in the demonstrated image below. A click on financial aid will pop-up page that contains courses under your selected career course and a notification that your application takes up to 15 days to be reviewed, this is a start to your process, and all you need to do at this point is to click on the blue highlighted call-to-action button of “continue to the application”
See the below image.
A click on ‘Continue to the application’ will land you on another pop-up page that annotates the original course price fee and list of courses under your selected career course.
Your next Click is to click on ‘Next’ to process to a page where to write an appeal and fill out an application that includes information about your educational background, career goals, and financial circumstances.
N.B: Your appeal letter must be up to 150 words (The reason you applied for aid),
how do I count my words? don’t need to worry, the webpage algorithm has keyword density programmed that will allow counting your words as you type.
The next demonstrated image below will explain how to fill this most important page that determined your approval, take note, this page determines your approval, you must write to convenience them why you need the aid approval and the benefit it will add to your career life or job.
here is how I fill my application as it can be used as an example to walk you through.
The next thing to do after you are done with this page and done writing your “reason you applied for aid”, is to click on the box in front of the “I’ve reviewed my information and everything is up to date” phrase, tick the box and click on NEXT to proceed to step 2 of the application page where you will answer a few more questions,
Like;
- How much can you pay for your selected course?
2. How will this selected course help with your goals?
3. Accept the terms and conditions by ticking the boxes and writing I agree to the term above under the agreement phrase
4. And then click on the preview to proceed.
See the below-demonstrated image for an example.
A click on review will land you a “Thank you page” where you can review your application and perhaps edit before final submission. However, don’t forget it takes 15 days for applications to be reviewed.
See the below images.
That's, how to apply but not ended there, each application goes for each course which means it’s obliged to apply for each course under your selected career course if you want to enjoy the full courses for free. For example, courses covered in my chosen course (Data Science)have four courses under them which mean I will have to apply for aid for the other courses so I can have full courses for free.
To do this is very simple and all I need to do is to apply the same process of application by going back to my selected course page, click on financial aid, then strolling my cursor down to view the listed courses under my selected course, selecting the next course as its list and applying in the same way the first course was applied for, and apply the same method till all courses under your selected course fully applied for.
Make sure this is done for all the courses on the same day so your application feedback from Coursera can be on the same day and this will specify to Coursera that you need aid for the full course program.
(Typically 15 days)
Thanks for the time to read, if you find this article a helpful journal resource, kindly like, comment, and share with others.
For any questions, please feel free to contact me on my Twitter or My LinkedIn and I will be pleased to answer your question to your satisfaction and guide you through the process.
Gratitude!!!
I am Scorefield
