Undergraduate Awards FAQ
High School Awards
All awards are included within a specific competition. If you've found a specific award on the “Search for awards” page, the deadline can be used to determine which competition it belongs to. You can browse the competition timelines here:
The largest entrance awards that UCalgary offers are part of the prestige awards competition. Student entering directly from high school can be considered for these awards by submitting a prestige awards application by December 1 each year. Prestige awards are awarded to our highest achieving entering students. They range from $10,000-$20,000 and are renewable on a yearly basis. You must be a domestic (Canadian) student to apply for most prestige awards.
The majority of our high school entrance awards and undergraduate continuing awards do not cover the full tuition, fees, and/or living expenses of a student.
If you're a domestic student, you may wish to look into government funded student loans to provide support during your undergraduate degree.
If you're an international student, we recommend that you secure other sources of funding prior to committing to studying at UCalgary.
International Awards
You can view all of the available awards for international students on our international awards webpage, which also includes upcoming featured awards.
We advise international students to secure other financial support because even if awarded, scholarships/awards will likely only cover a portion of your university tuition, fees and living expenses.
Transfer Awards
You may still be eligible to apply for high school awards depending on the number of post-secondary courses you've taken.
You'll be considered a student entering from high school if:
- you've completed three (or fewer) post-secondary level courses and
- your final high school grades are used for your admission consideration, you should still considered a high school entering student for admission to the University of Calgary.
Students entering UCalgary from high school are eligible to apply for prestige awards and high school entrance awards.
You'll be considered a transfer student if:
- you've completed or are registered to complete four (or more) post-secondary courses before attending UCalgary
Transfer students aren't eligible for entrance awards, but you'll be eligible for undergraduate continuing awards once you've completed one full year of academic studies at UCalgary.
If you're a mature entering student who hasn't previously taken post-secondary level courses, you may be eligible to apply for entering student awards based on your high school admission average.
Mature students who've completed four or more post-secondary level courses are considered transfer students. Transfer students are only eligible for internal competitive awards after completing one full year of studies at UCalgary. As a continuing undergraduate student, there are some awards, scholarships, and bursaries which include preferences for mature students. You can search for these awards on our website.
Students entering an after-degree undergraduate program are only eligible for faculty nominated awards and scholarships. Once you've completed one full year of academic studies, you may be eligible to apply for continuing undergraduate awards (this excludes the MD and JD programs).
Students entering a professional undergraduate programs in medicine or law are eligible for entrance awards specific to their professional program:
Renewable Awards
When searching the undergraduate awards database, renewable awards are indicated with this in their name: (renewable).
Students must meet the requirements for their renewal to be eligible for subsequent years of a renewable award. The requirements can be found listed under the award’s terms of reference.
Application Questions
The application period for undergraduate awards competitions is open for multiple weeks to allow students to complete the application at a convenient time. To be fair to all students who've submitted an application on time, we aren't able to accept late awards applications for any of our undergraduate awards competitions.
There are two sections in an awards application where you can report extracurricular activity:
- The first section is the extracurricular activities list. This is meant to be the comprehensive list of all extracurricular activities you've participated in during the previous/current academic year. For each activity type, you can add rows for involvement over multiple years, and provide a description of your involvement in those activities. Please review the instructions at the beginning of the Extracurricular Activities section for more clarification.
- The second portion required are short essay-style questions. These are meant to highlight your specific activities and experience for a given area such as leadership, community service, or entrepreneurship. In this section, we'd like to hear how your previously-listed activities demonstrate skills and experience in a given area. You may use the same activities for multiple answers as long as they're relevant to the essay prompt.
Financial information is used to assess students for bursaries and awards that require the student to have a financial deficit (fewer resources than expected expenses).
When reporting resources, please use the parental or personal income from the previous tax year, as well as current savings amounts.
When reporting expenses, please report or estimate your expected expenses for Sept. 1 to April 30 of the upcoming year. If you require assistance estimating your expenses, you can use the UCalgary cost estimator tool as a guide.
If you're experiencing issues with the information you're entering into an awards application, please read the error message. This should direct you to the field that's blocking you from saving the application. If you're unable to locate this field, please take a screenshot of your error message and contact student financial support.
Awards Questions
UCalgary applies equitable distributions to all internal awards selections. We try to distribute awards equally among the highest eligible students to allow as many students to receive award funding as possible. Students who've been selected for one award in a competition won't be awarded multiple awards in that same competition.
Competitive awards (students must submit an application to be considered for these awards) are selected based on the terms of reference indicated for each award within the competition. Terms of reference for all awards can be found in the Searchable Award Database.
Nominated awards recipients are selected based on terms of reference by the applicable department or faculty. Recipients are notified by student financial support.
Students must maintain 95% in their final admission average to remain eligible for the President’s Admission Scholarship. The award may be rescinded if their final admission average is lower than 95%.
To receive your awards payment, you must meet the requirements for receiving an award. If you previously had an award appearing in the “Awards and Scholarships” section of your student, and the award no longer appears, it's possible that you no longer meet the terms to receive the payment of your award. For more information, please refer to our receiving award payments guide.
Payment Questions
If there aren't any outstanding tuition/fees on your student account, then any excess award funds are paid out to you after the add/drop deadline each semester. Once these funds are interfaced to payroll for processing, they'll appear on your account as a “refund.” This will trigger your funds to be paid out by direct deposit at the next eligible payroll date. Please refer to your award notification letter for details regarding payment timelines for your specific award.
Successful recipients of undergraduate awards are notified based on the competition timelines of that award. Application, deadline, notification, and payment timelines are listed on the respective pages for each award competition:
You can access the comprehensive list of all internally funded awards through their you Student Centre (my.ucalgary.ca). View the financials tab within the "Awards and Scholarships" section to find all of your received awards separated by year.