CFA Scholarship: Eligibility Criteria and Application Process

Qualified candidates can take advantage of the CIPM scholarship program, which reduces their exam registration fees. To understand more about the CFA scholarship, scroll down!

Overview of CFA Scholarship

CFA scholarships are part of the commitment to fostering the highest ethical, educational, and professional standards.

These scholarships make the CFA charter more accessible and allow more people to enhance their careers.

Eligibility Criteria

Applicants must meet all CFA Program enrollment requirements.
Applications are evaluated on a financial need basis, but not necessarily the only factor considered.

Application Process

Understand the form: You can save your current progress in the application for later and return to previous sections of the form. However, you cannot move to the next portion of the online application until you have completed all of the previous sections. This may be a minor inconvenience to some.
Save your unique statement on your own platform. For applications that require a personal statement (e.g., Access and Women scholarships), we recommend typing up your 3,500-character maximum personal statement on a word processor for grammar and spelling checks, but more importantly, creating a backup that you can easily copy over into your application later.
What makes a good personal statement? Your unique story. While this applies only to Access and Women scholarship applicants, our research suggests that the more personal your answer, the better.
No changes allowed after submitting: Make sure that all the details in your application are correct before submitting.
Apply for the scholarship(s) before registering for the exam. You don’t qualify for the scholarship if you have already registered for the exam, as it indicates that you do indeed have the ability to pay.
Please wait for the scholarship decision before registering for the exam. Before you register for an exam, you must first wait for an official decision on your scholarship application.
Get your international passport completed. To register and take the CFA tests, you must have an international travel passport. Other forms of identification are not accepted.
You can apply more than once: Fortunately, you can receive a CFA scholarship more than once, so provided that you qualify, it is worth applying again after your first exam. Even if you’ve failed an exam, you still can apply for a scholarship for your retake.
You can apply for multiple scholarships at once: If a candidate receives multiple scholarships (of any kind), the scholarship that is most recently awarded will be applied.
No double-dipping: You will not qualify for a scholarship if you start working for an employer that offers reimbursement for exam registrations, but of course, you wouldn’t really need the scholarship in that case anyway.
You still need funding. Keep in mind that even with the scholarship, you will need to pay an extra $150 for printed copies of the curriculum if you want.
Advice specifically for Access Scholarships applicants:
- References: In the latest updates, it seems that CFA Institute has removed the need for any references in your Access scholarship applications. Yay!
- Gross household income and net assets: Firstly, there is no minimum or maximum income or asset level for scholarship candidates. Although this section may look thorough, just go through each category of income and net asset systematically, then add them up to form your best estimates in US$.
Wasting the scholarship is a costly decision: It also goes without saying that if you are awarded a scholarship, you should treasure the opportunity by studying hard, giving it your best shot, and sitting for the exam.