Thanks to the Universities Project, 52 Students from the Czech Republic Will Go to the World’s Best Universities This Fall

The family foundation of Mrs. Renáta Kellnerová and Mr. Petr Kellner, The Kellner Family Foundation, has been awarding grants under the Universities project since 2009. In the coming 2015/2016 academic year, grants totaling some CZK 10 million will be distributed to 52 students. The Foundation has accepted 12 new students to the program, while 40 grantees will continue studies begun in past years.

Students who are achieving excellent academic results but whose difficult socioeconomic backgrounds prevent them from realizing their academic potentials are able to receive high-quality educations with the help of the Universities project. As in previous years, the most frequent destinations for academic pursuits are the United Kingdom, the U.S., the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Germany.

“This year, 146 Czech students have applied for grants under the Universities project. We appreciate the students’ desire and courage to travel abroad and stand on their own feet. We are also delighted to see our successful graduates who have completed their studies and joined the ranks of the highly sought-after graduates for employers in the Czech Republic and elsewhere,” says Mrs. Hana Halfarová, Director of the Universities and Open Gate projects at The Kellner Family Foundation. 

The Kellner Family Foundation’s Universities project grantees will most frequently be acquiring expertise in the humanities and social sciences, as well as the life sciences and mathematics.

This year, the largest numbers of grantees come from Prague (13 students), and the Central Bohemian and the Moravian-Silesian Regions (8 students each). Four grantees come from the Vysočina, Zlín and Olomouc Regions, three from the Southern Moravian and Karlovy Vary Regions, two from the Southern Bohemian Region, and the Plzeň and Ústí Regions are each represented by one grantee. One student was born in Somalia.

On the UNIVERSITIES project

Candidates for Universities project grants must submit their grant applications to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees by the end of May of each year. Applications must contain their academic and extracurricular achievements, proof of language proficiency in the form of examination results, a recommendation by a person who has been contributing to the candidate’s academic or artistic development, information about the target university/college, an essay on the student’s plans for the future, and documents proving the candidate’s current financial standing. Great emphasis is also placed on volunteering, i.e. the things the student does for the benefit of their community and society as a whole.

The Foundation’s Board of Trustees decides on grants on the basis of selections and recommendations made by a panel composed of Mrs. Renáta Kellnerová, Professor Radek Špíšek, and Mrs. Hana Halfarová. In the second round of the selection process, the panel meets with the winning students for personal interviews every year.