Merit-based awards, such as scholarships and prizes, are offered mainly based on your academic performance. Usually, students are nominated for merit-based awards by their academic unit; however, students should make their interests in applying for a specific award known to their supervisor, their academic unit's Graduate Advisor or their academic unit's Graduate Secretary. Often, students will be required to provide supporting documentation as part of a nomination package.

Scholarships are a particular type of merit-based award, and are conferred primarily for academic achievement. Some scholarships may require achievement in other areas such as leadership, community service, artistic endeavours and athletics. Typically, scholarships will be offered based on achievements in the preceding school year and will be awarded at the beginning of the Winter Session. Scholarships are applied to your tuition first.

Prizes are another type of merit-based award, and are conferred based on academic achievement at the end of a Session. They may be awarded on the basis of performance in a specific course, best student in the program or for some other specified characteristic. Prizes are awarded at the end of the Session and recipients are not required to return to UBC in order to receive them. Some prizes have a monetary award while others may be in the form of a book or medal.

UBC's Faculty of Graduate Studies (FoGS) administers academic merit-based funds to graduate students, including University Graduate Fellowships (UGFs), Killam Fellowships and affiliated awards, NSERC, SSHRC, CIHR and other external awards, and academic unit-recommended graduate awards. FoGS' Awards and Financial Aid web page lists eligibility and application instructions for the merit-based funding listed above.

In order to assist Education graduate students to optomise their ability to successfully secure competitive, merit based funding two videos have been produced to provide student applicaints with practivcal advise and hints to help them through the application process. Click here to view them.

UBC's Student Financial Assistance and Awards (SFA&A) office also maintains a Scholarships & Bursaries Award Search Engine engine that allows you to identify UBC scholarships, prizes and awards that match various search criteria.

The Office of Graduate Programs & Research (OGPR) in the Faculty of Education also maintains a list of OGPR-administered prizes, grants & scholarships for Education graduate students.