Sibelius Academy Guide for Doctoral Studies in Music: Are You Applying for a Scholarship?

When postgraduate students apply for scholarships, grants, and funding for work (hereafter “scholarship”), their supervisors, teachers, and other experts are happy to write recommendations and statements upon request. If the expert is not employed by the Sibelius Academy, he/she is not obligated to do this, although most experts will certainly help to advance the studies of a postgraduate student in their field. Below is some advice for requesting recommendations.

A recommendation should be requested well in advance. All of the necessary information must be given to the writer of the recommendation. You should make it as easy as possible to write the recommendation.

Request a recommendation well in advance, at least several weeks before the deadline. Supervisors can be very busy. Often several scholarship applicants turn to a potential referee at the same time.

When requesting a recommendation, provide all of the necessary information. The referee must usually write a statement concerning the potential of the scholarship applicant. Recommendations and statements are always formulated according to the purpose and context at hand. You should therefore make writing a statement as effortless as possible for the statement provider so that he/she will be happy to write statements again in the future. Even if you believe that the referee remembers you and your plans and intentions, you should include the following in your request:

• Information concerning your plan and the project that the scholarship will be for, so that the statement provider does not need to search for or verify this information
• All of the information that will be submitted to the body granting the potential scholarship (hereafter also ”fund”)

If you send a recommendation request and the related material on paper by mail, it is polite to enclose a pre-addressed, franked envelope, unless the recommendation will be provided electronically. It is polite to thank the person for providing a statement.

Provide information concerning the applicant:

1. Purpose of the scholarship as phrased by you in the application. Work plan in the form that you will submit to the fund. If the scholarship or other grant concerns the entire doctoral degree plan, it is polite to include the doctoral degree plan (without appendices) in the statement request so that the supervisor does not have to search for it elsewhere and even if he/she has it and remembers its main points. Including the plan is vital when the statement provider is not a supervisor, because doctoral study plans are confidential under data protection regulations, so nobody else but supervisors have (detailed) information about the plan.
2. Sum that is applied for.
3. Proposed schedule.

More information about the body granting the potential scholarship is required:

1. by which the statement is required.
2. Foundation, fund, or other granting body and the individual or party to whom the statement should be addressed (board, representative etc.).

The address of the above, i.e. the address where the statement should be sent, and the identification code of a possible electronic application. Please, note that although statements can be submitted electronically to funds, not all statement providers want or can use this method, so a mailing address is required. The choice therefore lies with the statement provider. (It is unreasonable to expect the statement provider to search online or elsewhere for the fund’s address and other information.) You can provide the fund’s homepage address as additional information if the statement provider wishes to check something there.