New Zealand Scholarship Samoan

You can enter if you are enrolled in a consented New Zealand secondary school, and you do not have to be working towards NCEA to enter. Not all schools enter students for Scholarship, and some enter only a small number of subjects, so talk to your teacher about whether your school will enter you.

Assessment is by either a written or spoken examination or by the submission of a portfolio or report of work produced throughout the year. The assessment has between 3 and 5 parts, each scored from 0 to 8, and your part scores are added together to give your final result.

Assessments are designed to be challenging for the most able students in each subject. A score of 8 is an outstanding answer in all respects, showing strong evidence of integration and synthesis and being accurate, comprehensive, coherent, lucid and perceptive. A score of 1 shows little understanding relevant to the question.

To be awarded a Scholarship or Outstanding Scholarship you need to reach a set score known as a cut score. Students who reach the cut score receive NZ Scholarship, and the very top students receive Outstanding Scholarship. Students who score below the cut score do not receive NZ Scholarship in that subject.

Soon after results are released, your assessed work will be available through your learner login. If you believe an error was made in marking, you can apply for a reconsideration or review, but there is a limited time from when your assessed work is available in which to apply.

NZ Scholarship results are released in mid-February each year. Soon after that, your assessed work becomes available through your learner login. If you are submitting a Visual Arts portfolio, note that portfolios are returned in December following the completion of marking, which is a different timetable from results release.

The number of Scholarships available in a subject is limited to around 3% of the number of students who achieve 14 or more credits in that subject at NCEA Level 3. There is some variation around the 3%, mainly for subjects with few candidates at NCEA Level 3.

Awards range from a one-off $500 payment for a single subject award to $10,000 per year for up to 3 years for premier award winners. To be paid you must be enrolled in tertiary study at an approved provider in New Zealand in a course approved by StudyLink, and you can defer for up to 4 consecutive years.

Work from the subject's assessment criteria and past exemplars, and practise applying your understanding to complex situations rather than memorising content. The common failure modes are shallow, descriptive answers that show little understanding of the actual question, and ignoring the multi-part structure, so rehearse timing across all parts before the assessment.