If there is anything you can be sure of about Malaysian JPA scholarships for overseas universities, you can be sure it is the fact that there will always be more scholarship holders in certain courses. For one, this could be due to a funding emphasis placed by the Malaysian government in accordance with the needs of a developing nation. Another factor to consider will be the cost of a particular scholarship as well as the number of scholarships provided by other governments to Malaysia.

We know that engineering courses will remain a strong favourite with both students and JPA for quite some time to come. For aspiring engineers, all is well as JPA scholarships are provided to a multitude of countries for the subject. Prized above all is a JPA engineering scholarship to the United States (UK scholarships are getting rarer, after all). If you do not receive this most valuable of scholarships, you are likely to get one of the European countries, such as France and Germany. Reputation wise, they are excellent. But you would have to learn a new language (i.e. French or German) to go there, and that will be tough given the natural difficulty of European languages (compared to English).

For medicine, UK scholarships are a rarity. What aspiring doctors should be aiming for is Australia, India and Russia. If you are unlucky enough, you might actually get Indonesia. But given it is a scholarship nonetheless, “unlucky” is probably a bad word to use. In any case, no matter where you graduate from, a doctor is a doctor. So, there is no need to worry too much about it.

Now, I would put computer science somewhere along with engineering when it comes to “difficulty”. Competition does not seem too great. In previous years, one of the most difficult to get was probably a scholarship for Accountancy to UK. I say previous years because I heard that by now, it has probably been phased out already. Correct me if I am wrong of course.

So, from all this, it is clear that US and UK scholarships will be the hardest to get, while engineering and computer science are the easier courses of study to get. All in all, I hope my point got across. While your preference for a specific course and country of study will always be an important guide, it is equally (if not more important) to understand that subject choice is an important thing when it comes to receiving a scholarship offer. If you a border line case, choosing an “easier” course and country of study might be the best way to go. Now, I do understand that what I have said so far sounds terribly simplistic, but the simplistic ideas here could end up being terribly important. It is up to you to decide whether or not to take my words to heart.