From:
To:arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com
To Arab Times newspaper

Dear Dr Osama Fawzi,

After waiting for your article on the case of Mr F. Malahmeh I find my self obligated to provide some details as a ‌ Chevening Scholarships applicant in 2002/2003, and later a self-funded postgraduate Jordanian student in the UK and from my experience of being part of the Academic staff of a leading UK university in the last year I would like to provide some details to you and your readers on the selection criteria of the universities in the UK and on “Chevening Scholarships Programmeâ€‌ mentioned in your article, instead of proof-less accusations and texts full of grammatical errors, I’m just providing information that leads to a legitimate questions that remain unanswered and is supportive to your story.

Feel free to use the text below, and allow me to request:

- To hide my email address please.

- Only subject to your assurance not to reveal it, I’m willing to provide you my identity, and further details.

There are clear basic requirements or “selection criteriaâ€‌ used by the British Council in filtering the applicants that reached the number of 800 in 2002/2003 programme, this number is according to a reply from a secretary in the British Council when the writer of these words asked why its taking so long to receive a response.

All the details are available on the chevening scholarships website, on the country page of Jordan, “APPLICATION PROCEDURES AND CRITERIAâ€‌ the page is available through the link

http://www.chevening.com/about/countries/jordan/index.html

The requirements as announced by Chevening clearly state the following:

آ§ “The Minimum IELST of 6.5â€‌ the English language requirement demands at least IELTS score of 6.5 (of a maximum 9.0) which is just above 6.0 the minimum language requirement to get an admission to a UK university (however you can get an admission even if you have lets say 5.0 but only after passing a summer course in English language at the university), however applicants with 7.0 and above get an unconditional acceptance, the point though is that according to the “announcedâ€‌ Chevening Scholarships application requirements, an applicant without an IELTS score of less than 6.5 or if you don’t submit the IELTS test score “YOUR APPLICATION WILL NOT BE CONSIDEREDâ€‌, So the application of the Mr F. Malahmeh should not be considered from the first place! more details on the IELTS scores and their interpretation are available on

http://www.ielts.org/candidates/results/default.aspx

آ§ The Chevening Scholarships clearly state that it does not usually sponsor PhD studies and is mainly concerned in one-year masters courses, hence even a two-year masters course might not be considered, so sponsoring a PhD is clearly exceptional, and subject to the fact that the applicant is willing to co-fund, that could explain the involvement of the Royal Court (known as AL-DEWAN), so on what grounds was Mr Malahmeh exceptional?

آ§ “Applicants must be university graduates with a good degreeâ€‌, in other words the BA or BSc should be at least awarded a V.Good in the Jordanian University standards (which is a GPA of 76% and above), this is equivalent to 3.5/5 in the American standards and a 2:1 in the British Standards.

آ§ “A minimum of two years working experienceâ€‌, this experience should be relevant and according to that experience an applicant would have a future potential and is more worthwhile to be funded. Where is the working experience in our case here?

The application form is available on the web:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/cheveform.pdf#search='Chevening%20application%20form'

The Chevening Scholarships are managed by the British Council on behalf of the British embassy and the Foreign Office, after applying the above, the applicants considered are reduced to 80, then after further investigations among these 80 applicants some are short listed for an interview then the final decision is made in February, given the fact that usually the deadline is either Sep/Oct the process takes 4-5 months, so we assume that all applicants are investigated inside-out, so by what means an applicant with no satisfactory command of English would be selected for an interview and then paradoxically be given an exceptional scholarship for a PhD degree.

It is widely known that when applying for any scholarship, having an admission in hand before applying will substantially strengthen the application, usually the process of a PhD application is not as simple as masters or undergraduate degree, a research proposal is required and for funding purposes –generally- this proposal is of vital importance as it allows for the funding body to assess whether this research is worth funding or not, the proposal is also to reflect the capacity and the “human capitalâ€‌ of the applicant that enables him to succeed.

The question is: what sort of an impressive research proposal was produced out of an applicant who is not even competent in English? or was there any sort of a research proposal in the first instance?

Financially, there are 3 types of Scholarships given by Chevening; type A, B, and C

A is just for Tuition fees only, B covers tuition fees and an allowance and C varies from an award to another, details available at

http://www.chevening.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=58&d=11&h=24&f=46&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y

It makes sense that Tuition fees paid directly by either Chevening or British Government to the university concerned, not to the student, this is usually the case in Scholarships around the world, especially in the UK.

The questions are then: how the tuition fees could be given to the student but not paid to the university directly? the reason behind that is the fact of not having an admission, then for the sake of an argument if he was awarded the scholarship without an admission –where he should not be awarded- then there will be a commitment by Chevening/British Council to pay for Tuition fees subject to having an offer letter from a UK university, instead of giving him an official stamped paper they gave him the money in cash or a cheque! Why?

If that was the case and having spent all the money, then he should be legally responsible for paying that money back, or he can just walk away with it!

These are the question for the British Council to answer.

Its important to note that if you drop out of university in the UK early enough after one semester –before taking the exams- the university is willing to give the money back, I can personally certify that, as some of my friends dropped out early of my masters course and they or their sponsor were paid back tuition fees. If Mr Malahmeh had to leave his university -because his supervisor left the university- then from my knowledge of UK universities he would be able to prove that very easily, and the university would help him to explain that to his sponsor. Mr Malahmeh can easily prove himself innocent by simply give you a fax copy a letter from Glasgow University (or any where else) including dates of admission and reasons for leaving, and the fact that he did not do so proves the story of ArabTimes. But the following questions still hold:

1. How can a very basic requirement of Chevening Scholarships be violated, how could an applicant without an IELTS score be shortlisted?

2. Why the funding was given exceptionally for a PhD degree without having even an admission to any university? On what grounds was he awarded? What was exceptional about him?

3. Why he was given the money personally, and if the money was wasted, why he is not legally responsible for paying the money back?

4. How many young Jordanian applied to Chevening Scholarships, how many of them had an IELTS score of more than 7.0, how many of them had official offers from UK universities?

5. Why hasn’t Mr Malahmeh defend himself by showing a proof of admission?

As an applicant to the Chevening Scholarship, and as Jordanian patriot the writer of these words seeks answers to the above questions, as he believe that he and a lot of other applicants are clearly much more competent to be awarded, notice that all of the above does not mention the Royal Court (known as DEWAN) because the standards are known to everyone, that’s why we seek the British council for funding as an escape from the corruption of our government, it is very shocking and disappointing to realise that our suspicions of corruption in the British Council for the Chevening Scholarship awards were –unfortunately and painfully- true.

Sincerely,