Scholarship, bursary, grant, fellowship: what the words mean

You are on a funding page and it uses four words for what looks like the same thing. Then someone tells you to apply for a bursary, and you are fairly sure you already applied for one of these, and you cannot tell whether that was it.

The words are not interchangeable. They answer two questions, and once you know which two, the whole vocabulary sorts itself out.

The questions are: is this decided on my grades or on my family's money, and does it pay for me or for a thing I want to do.

The six words, side by side

None of the six is a loan. That is the single most useful thing on this page, because the anxiety underneath most of these searches is whether the money comes back out of you later. It does not.

Scholarship

Merit based. The word merit is where people go wrong, because it does not mean grades alone.

Plenty of Canadian scholarships assess leadership, community contribution, or a specific interest alongside academics, and some barely look at your transcript at all. If you have decided you are not a scholarship person because your average is not the top of your year, you have probably ruled out awards you would be competitive for.

The Ontario Graduate Scholarship is a clean example of the standard shape. It is run by the province with participating Ontario universities, it is merit based, and the province publishes the values: $10,000 for two consecutive study terms and $15,000 for three. It is for master's and doctoral students, which is worth noting, because a large share of the awards using the word scholarship are aimed at graduate study rather than at school leavers.

The essay is usually where a merit award is actually decided. How to write a scholarship essay that sounds like you is the piece on that.

Bursary

Need based. You demonstrate that the cost of studying exceeds what you and your family can cover, and the bursary closes some of the gap.

Assessment usually asks for household income, sometimes a form a parent or guardian completes, sometimes a short statement about your circumstances. Institutions vary and their own awards office is the only reliable source for what they want.

Two things students get wrong here, and both cost money.

The first is assuming you will not qualify. Thresholds are wider than people expect, and a twenty minute application has a better return than almost anything else you could do with twenty minutes.

The second is thinking a bursary application affects your standing for merit awards. It does not. They are assessed separately, usually by different people, and you can hold both.

And bursaries at your own institution are, per dollar, the least competitive funding available to you. The applicant pool is only your school, while a national scholarship draws the whole country. Almost nobody optimises for this.

Grant

A grant funds a thing rather than a person. A project, a piece of research, a specific cost.

The application is different in kind because of that. A scholarship application asks who you are. A grant application asks what you are going to do, what it will cost, and how you know it will work.

Explorers Club Impact Grants support field based projects advancing scientific and environmental work, which is a clear case of funding the work rather than the applicant's tuition. At the other end of the scale, the Alpkit Foundation grants award up to £500 for getting people and communities outdoors. Small grants are real grants, and they are frequently the ones nobody bothers applying for.

The AAUW Women's Impact Grant sits between them at $15,000 for project work.

Why grants usually come with a report

Because someone gave money for a specified purpose, and they need to know it went there.

Expect to account for what you spent and what happened, usually on a set date after the project ends. This surprises first time applicants who were thinking of it as winning something. It is closer to being trusted with a budget, and treating it that way from the start makes the reporting straightforward rather than stressful.

It is also why a grant is worth more than the money on an application. You can point at a budget you managed and a report you filed.

Fellowship

A fellowship funds a person for a defined term, usually with a programme around it, often a cohort, and normally an expectation that you do something during it.

This is the fuzziest of the six words and it varies most by field. In the sciences a fellowship is frequently postdoctoral research funding. In social impact it is closer to backing a founder. In the arts it can mean time, space, and a small payment.

The Echoing Green Fellowship supports leaders working on systemic problems through early stage social ventures, which is the founder-backing version. The Bow Seat True Blue Fellowship takes a small cohort each year doing creative work on ocean issues, at a much younger age band.

When you see the word, read what the term is, what you are expected to produce, and whether it pays a stipend. Those three answers tell you more than the word does.

Stipend and honorarium

These two are not awards at all, which is why nothing defines them for you.

A stipend is a fixed living allowance paid across a period so that you can do the thing. It is not a wage, it is not calculated from hours, and it does not usually scale with how much work you actually put in. Riipen Labs for Learners attaches a $300 stipend to project work with real employers, which is a typical shape: modest, fixed, tied to completing something.

An honorarium is a one-off payment for a contribution you already made. A talk, a workshop, a seat on a panel. It is offered rather than applied for, and the amount is conventional rather than calculated.

The practical difference: a stipend is agreed in advance and you can plan around it. An honorarium arrives afterwards and you should never count on it before it is offered.

If you are comparing paid work arrangements rather than funding, the terminology there is its own mess, and internship, co-op, or work placement sorts that side out.

What this means for your taxes in Canada

This is where I stop, because it depends on your enrolment status and I am not going to give you tax advice.

What I will say is that scholarship, fellowship, and bursary income is treated under its own rules, and whether any of it is taxable turns on whether you are a full time qualifying student. The Canada Revenue Agency covers it directly at line 13010, taxable scholarships, fellowships, bursaries, and artists' project grants, and P105, Students and Income Tax is the plain language version.

Read the current guidance rather than an older article, including this one. Ask the funder what they will issue you, because that is the piece most people forget to ask about until March.

Which one should you be applying for

Not a table. A short decision path.

If your grades or a specific achievement are your strongest signal, start with scholarships.

If money is the barrier, apply for bursaries at your own institution first, then look outward. Best return per dollar, and the least contested.

If you have a project you want to run, look for grants. More work on the application, and you end up with something to point at afterwards either way.

If you want time and a structure rather than a cheque, look for fellowships, and read the term length before anything else.

Most people should apply in more than one of these categories. They are assessed separately and they are not competing with each other.

Where to find each type

One warning worth carrying with you. The same funder often runs a scholarship, a bursary, and a grant under names that sound almost identical, and their own page will not always use the word the way this page does. Read what it pays for and how it is decided, not what it is called. That is the underlying reason these words get mixed up in the first place.

Where to actually look, in the order that pays best. Your own institution's awards office, because that is the least contested funding you will ever apply for. Then professional bodies and associations in your field, which run awards almost nobody outside the field hears about. Then regional and community foundations, which fund by geography rather than by merit alone. Then the large national and international awards, last, because they are the most contested and the most searched.

Most students do that list backwards.

One note on usage. American pages use grant more loosely than Canadian ones, often meaning need based funding for tuition, which is what a bursary is here. If a page is US based and the word does not fit the definition above, that is usually why.