Why this exists
Search for "fully funded scholarships" and you meet the same problem again and again: long lists copied from other long lists, awards that closed years ago, "free tuition" claims that stopped being true, and links that lead to a blog rather than to the university. For an international student, that noise costs real money in application fees and real months in wasted time.
DegreeStep does one narrow thing. It lists study routes where the money is real — where tuition is free for international students, or where a scholarship pays tuition and living costs, or where a university meets the full financial need of the students it admits — and it sends you to the official page for every one of them.
What you will find here
- The live board. Every route with its funding type, study levels, fields and a deadline countdown recalculated against today's date. You can filter, save a shortlist, compare routes and export deadlines to your calendar.
- A page for every route. What the funding covers, who can apply, how the application works, the traps applicants miss, and a week-by-week timeline — each with the official sources we checked and the date we checked them.
- Country guides. How tuition, living costs and proof-of-funds rules work in the countries with several funded routes.
- Guides. Practical articles on the parts of an application that decide funding: reading funding labels, planning a year ahead, motivation letters, references, documents and scams.
- A schools directory. Official websites of well-known universities, funded or not, so you always apply through the school's own domain.
Why "DegreeStep"?
Every funded degree abroad starts with one step: finding a route where the money is real, and applying before it closes. That step is what this site is for. We show it the way an airport departures board would, because a board tells you three things at a glance: where you can go, when it leaves, and whether you still have time. That is exactly what an applicant needs to know about a scholarship. The board on our home page flips to show the routes closing soonest, and each route page is your boarding pass: the facts, the documents and the timeline.
What we leave out
We deliberately exclude routes that sound free but are not — for example Norway's public universities, which have charged non-EU/EEA students tuition since 2023, and German states that charge non-EU students fees. We also leave out partial awards unless they are clearly labelled as such (look for the Merit and Low Tuition tags). A shorter list you can trust beats a longer one you have to re-check.
How we are funded, and how we stay independent
DegreeStep is free to use. It is paid for by advertising served by Google, shown only in clearly labelled "Advertisements" spaces that are kept apart from the listings. We may later offer optional paid tools; the listings themselves will always be free.
No university, scholarship provider or agent pays to be listed, and advertisers have no say over what we publish or how we describe it. If we ever show a paid placement, it will be labelled "Sponsored" in the listing itself. Read our editorial policy for how routes are chosen and checked.
What we are not
We are not a university, an admissions agent or a scholarship provider, and we are not affiliated with any of the institutions listed. We do not take applications, charge fees, or promise results. Decisions about admission and funding are made only by the institutions themselves — always confirm the details on their official pages before you apply.
Get in touch
Found an out-of-date deadline, a broken link, or a route we should consider? Please contact us — corrections that come with a link to the official source are checked first.