Over the last couples of years, Hungarian students have come into the limelight for their attainments at the top universities of the world. Two Hungarian educational institutions, the Fazekas Mihály Grammar School and the Milestone Institute were selected as being among the top 20 schools in the world by The Telegraph. For multiple years Hungarian students also had one of the highest acceptance rates to Cambridge University, while in 2018 Hungary topped the ranking in terms of successful admissions to Cambridge. The University of Oxford and Cambridge University recently released offer letters to those students who have a chance to gain admission to one of these prestigious universities in the United Kingdom. On this occasion, we asked about the successes of their mentees Stipendium Peregrinum (abbreviated as Stipi) and the Milestone Institute, two premium institutions that assist Hungarian students in their venture to study abroad.
Stipendium Peregrinum Helps Dozens of Talented Students Every Year
A spokesperson for Stipendium Peregrinum explained that the government-funded scholarship programme was launched three years ago as part of the National Talent Programme, which enables Hungarian students with the most outstanding abilities to obtain a degree at the world’s best universities with state assistance. The goal of the scholarship programme is to support outstandingly talented young people, who, based on their skills and knowledge, have a chance to study at one of the most prestigious universities in the world and are also willing to utilise their acquired knowledge during and after their studies in Hungary. The scholarship consists of three parts: in the first stage, Component A, students can apply to finance their costs related to admission (the language exam fee, travel costs, accommodation costs, a daily allowance, etc.). Applications for this component are still being accepted until 17 April 2023 at the National Talent Center’s website. The second stage of the programme, Component B, can provide support for already admitted talented students: Stipendium Peregrinum may even finance the full cost of students’ stay abroad. Component B is expected to be announced again at the end of May. In addition to all this, the third stage, Component C, can give the winners of Component B the support that enables students throughout the duration of their studies to dedicate their full attention exclusively to acquiring knowledge. The main patron of the scholarship programme is President Katalin Novák.
Stipendium Peregrinum told Hungarian Conservative that the interest in the scholarship programme is growing every year. Currently, 56 young people are studying across the globe thanks to the scholarship. Last year’s winners included 22 new scholarship recipients, while the remaining 34 students had already studied abroad with state support in the previous years and have successfully secured their funding again. Just like in previous years, the number of young people admitted to the United Kingdom was significant this year, too: 12 of the new scholarship recipients began their university studies there. Thanks to the scholarship four talented young Hungarians can study in the Netherlands, two in Switzerland, two in the USA, one in Belgium and one in Germany. Most of them will conduct their studies in STEM fields, but there are scholarship holders in social sciences, economics and arts as well. Among many other universities, the most talented students made it to universities such as Cambridge University, the University of Oxford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, the University of Amsterdam or the French École Polytechnique.
Milestone Institute Students Go to Oxbridge and Ivy League Colleges
The Milestone Institute also has a strong record of their mentees going on to top universities globally. Ágnes Horváth, Head of the Upper House at the Milestone Institute told Hungarian Conservative:
‘This year, Milestone Institute received ten Oxbridge offers and one of our Seniors holds an ED (Early Decision) offer to Columbia University, New York (we are still waiting for the Regular Decision outcomes). Last year the number was 12 Oxbridge and four Ivy League offers in addition to a number of students going to some of the best universities on the continent (Bocconi, Sciences Po, University of Amsterdam) as well as Imperial College London or LSE. In 2018 33 students secured offers from Oxford and Cambridge Universities from Milestone, which was an outstanding success on the regional, Central Eastern European level ,too.’
Else then the admission-related successes to the top universities in the world, Milestone also highlighted their students’ outstanding results at international competitions.
In 2022, the Milestone team won the Oxford Schools Debate Competition in the ESL category; one of our students got an honourable mention at the John Locke Essay competition, and we also have a silver medallist at the IGeO (International Geography Olympiad). We foster a strong culture of academic excellence and leadership, with strong and widespread student life activities—a combination of these is what leads to excellent competition results and university admissions.
The Outstanding Record of Stipendium Peregrinum’s Máté Barnabás Weisz
Máté Barnabás Weisz attended the special mathematics class of Miklós Radnóti Grammar School in Szeged. Even during his grammar school years, he won first place in competitions such as the International Hungarian Mathematics Competition, the Central-European Olympiad, and the International Mathematical Olympiad. He successfully applied for the Stipendium Peregrinum Scholarship for the first time in 2020. Since then, thanks to STIPI, he has been studying mathematics at Cambridge University. Máté also won a gold medal at the 2020 International Mathematical Olympiad, and he ended his first year of studies abroad with the best grade available in Cambridge, that is First Class. In the summer of 2022, within the framework of the ELTE REU grant, he participated in a theoretical mathematical research project where, as a member of a four-person team. The group managed to prove new results related to q-graphs. Thanks to Component C of the Stipendium Peregrinum scholarship, Máté can now continue his studies at Cambridge University where he started his third academic year in 2022.
According to Milestone’s Ágnes Horváth, the outstanding successes of Hungarian students can be explained with their dedication and hard work.
‘Hungarian students who are successful at top universities tend to show a combination of strong work ethic, ambition, the willingness to go above and beyond their curriculum, and the ability to handle a large workload.’
