HSK or other PRC scholarships

[Jive Turkey]

Has anyone here had any luck with getting PRC scholarships to study Chinese, either directly from a university or through the HSK scholarship program? You can find information about HSK scholarships here:

http://www.hanban.edu.cn

I already enquired about the HSK scholarships. I live in HK and wanted to know if I could take the HSK in HK and apply for a scholarship to study on the mainland. The Hanban people told me that since I'm American, I must take the HSK in the States in order to apply for the sholarship. All applicants must apply through the Chinese embassy in their country. I guess they don't care about those of us who are already in China . I also asked them what score on the HSK would be considered competitive when applying for an HSK scholarship. They didn't give me a clear answer.

HSK scholarships look pretty good on paper. Everything but an airticket is covered. Nevertheless, it's not worth it for me to return to the States to take the exam for a scholarship I may not get. Another strange thing about the scholarship is that you can only use it at one of eight universities: 北京大学、北京师范大学、北京语言大学、南开大学、复旦大学、华东师范大学、人民大学、南京师范大学. I know some of these schools have pretty good CFL programs, but some of them do not. I also know of schools that are not on this list that run pretty good programs. For example, Jinan University in Guangzhou runs similar degree and certificate programs to those offered at BLU, but Jinan U is not on the list.

I've also seen scholarships for studying Chinese on university websites. Jinan University has a few. I'm wondering if anybody here has had any success with getting either university or HSK scholarships.

[niubi]

i received a scholarship from the prc state council state education commission to study in china for one year (1996-7). i think with the political restructuring of the 90s, the commission was folded into the new ministry of education. at the time, this scholarship was called the chinese cultural scholarship or something like that and was awarded to 5 u.s. citizens each year. basically the same scholarship was given to nationals of most countries in the world with varying numbers of recipients per country. my application was first processed by the u.s. department of education, then forwarded to the chinese embassy who did some processing of their own and then they forwarded applications of recommended candidates to the state council state education commission. the commission selected candidates and then forwarded the applications to the candidates 3 top choices of schools to attend in china. the universities made decisions about which students they wanted, etc. that's a basic overview. no doubt things have changed in the intervening years.