QS Connect Masters 1-2-1 Scholarship: 2016’s Winner

The Connect Masters 1-2-1 Scholarship, worth US$2,000, is awarded every year exclusively to a student who has participated in the Connect Masters 1-2-1 scheme. Connect Masters 1-2-1, part of the QS World Grad School Tour, is a free service which allows prospective postgraduates to meet face-to-face with university representatives from around the world, allowing them to professionally discuss next steps for their career and studies.

This year’s winner is Lamarah Williams Steele, from the UK, who attended the Connect Masters 1-2-1 event in London in autumn 2015. Lamarah has been accepted to study a Masters in Management degree at IE Business School in Madrid, with a specialization in international business. She says the Connect Masters Scholarship will help to lighten the financial burden, enabling her to focus on achieving her education and career goals. She says: “Easing this worry means I can look forward to enjoying the whole experience. It also means I will have more resources to enjoy things that enhance my experience, such as study trips.”

Lamarah adds that attending the Connect Masters 1-2-1 event helped her to make a decision on where to apply for her master’s degree, saying: “Going to the fair and talking to a number of representatives at Connect 1-2-1 helped me navigate the postgraduate world”. She explains that the event helped her to feel more confident that she was the type of candidate business school are looking for, and to identify the school that would suit her best.

Entrepreneurial goals for the future

Lamarah previously studied a BSc in International Politics at Brunel University in the UK, graduating with first-class honors in July 2015. During this time, she took part in an exchange program to the University of Nottingham’s branch campus in Ningbo, China, which she says opened her mind and widened her world view. As part of this exchange program, she was awarded the Ningbo Government International Student Scholarship for Academic Excellence.

Since graduating, Lamarah has been working as a public affairs intern for Amazon, and has also completed a Civil Service Summer Diversity Program at the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions. Following this work experience, and her experience of studying abroad in China, Lamarah feels certain she’d like to study abroad again – this time in Spain. Keen to keep learning new things, and to develop and strengthen her existing skills, she says: “the best environment to do this is a diverse one, which is something that IE prides itself on.”

Looking to the future, Lamarah says her long-term goal is to “start a social enterprise organisation that focuses on giving children and young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds opportunities in sport and extra-curricular activities that would otherwise be unaffordable.” This interest in social entrepreneurship underlies her decision to study at IE Business School, which has a strong focus on entrepreneurship. She is keen to broaden her understanding of business, gaining specific knowledge on how to be a successful entrepreneur and create a new business, and says that by studying a Masters in Management at IE she hopes to “develop my entrepreneurial skills, my confidence, develop a diverse network of friends, continue to broaden my worldview and strengthen my leadership skills.”

Lamarah also offered some advice for other students applying for scholarships, saying: “Go for it. I think people assume that they don't have a chance because there will be a lot of people that apply for a particular scholarship, but that shouldn't stop you. You have nothing to lose by applying, and shouldn't doubt that you may be the type of person that an organisation is looking to award a scholarship to. You definitely do not have a chance of being awarded a scholarship if you don't apply for one.”