Becoming a Legit Awardee

Upon the completion of my PK (Persiapan Keberangkatan) from LPDP Scholarship, I was actually quite overwhelmed by the preparation that I had to prepare prior to my departure. Surprisingly, all the preparation that I did for the scholarship test is just as crazy as my pre-departure prep. A lot of people have shared their stories on how to pass the LPDP test, But now I will try to share my experience on the process of becoming a legit LPDP awardee (literally). 

So what happens after we are announced as one of LPDP scholarship's awardees?

PK, Persiapan Keberangkatan - is a 5-days set of activities which is mandatory and basically one of the most essential things of being a part of LPDP. Every PK will have a different theme and different activities, all depends on the members of each PK itself. I believe that the sole purpose of this event is to build a professional yet intimate relationship among its awardees and to establish the same vision in regards to our roles in Indonesia's development. The most interesting part of the PK for me is the sharing sessions where the awardees will get the privilege to meet some of the most notable scholars, public figures, and even ministers and former presidents/vice presidents who will share us some of their amazing stories and inspiring personal values.

A couple of weeks after finishing the PK, awardees usually receive the scholarship contracts. The contract will give us an elaborate explanation on our rights and responsibilities as a scholarship awardee and everything that will be covered financially by LPDP. After receiving the signed and approved contract, we will receive our Letter of Guarantee (LoG) which will be very useful for applying for visa.

When we already have our LoG (and our Certificate of Enrolment from the university), we can start applying for visa. Most of the time, a visa will require us to have a travel insurance (for the full period of our study) and, of course, other supporting documents such as our Letter of Acceptance from our university and our administration letters (ID, passport, Kartu Keluarga, birth certificate, etc). When we apply for the travel insurance, we are usually required to take a full medical check-up in a certain hospital. My family and I went to RS Premier Bintaro to have the med-check session, the result came pretty fast (it took only 1 day), and when everything is good the hospital will then send our result directly to Australia to be examined, and within 1-2 days we will get our travel insurance. It cost me around Rp 700.000/person for the medical check up and approximately 600 AUD for the insurance (1 year of study, and I used Allianz).

Applying for visa can be a bit tricky, especially when you apply for visas from the western countries such as the United States, UK, and Australia. There will be a lot of documents that you will have to fill, do not forget to have certified (translated) documents, and sometimes it will take time for us to get the visa. But I guess everything will worth the patience if we do it properly. It took us around 10 days to get our visa (because we applied 1 day before the Eid day, our application started to be processed 2 days after the Eid holidays), some of my friends obtained their visas just 5 days after they submitted the application (you can check the price of the visa here). Fortunately, my family and I used the agent's service for my master's preparation (basically everything -from applying to uni, insurance, visa, and accommodation), it really helped a lot because my husband worked outside of the city so it would have been difficult for us to arrange it ourselves. So, thanks IDP!😉

I guess that's all for the prep-talk 😁 I literally gotta catch my flight to Syd, I guess I'm gonna write about my first day in Sydney on my next post. Feel free to drop me some questions on my e-mail!