Two Thirds Richer

"So, I got an email from AUC this morning," Andrew told me nonchalantly. I could tell he was trying to hide something exciting from me, but he was doing a horrible job of it.

Before I could even respond he blurted out, "I got a fellowship!"

He was really excited, I was really excited, and Rachel was really excited even though she didn't understand why. She just knew that we were screaming and hugging and jumping up and down and she thought it was a lot of fun.

He was awarded a very competitive fellowship--which happens to be just the one we've been praying for since we were accepted three weeks ago.

The first thing I said when he told me was, "Al hamdu lilah!"

And I meant it, too. It is such a blessing to know that we won't have to pay for everything ourselves while we're over there. I've been trying to work out a budget to pay for tuition and housing and travel for those two years, but it was going to be nearly impossible to pay for everything without taking out substantial student loans. So we started praying for a fellowship.

It is such a relief that our prayers have been answered.

Andrew was awarded the International Graduate Fellowship, which normally would be a full-ride scholarship but because they've recently expanded their campus they had more applicants and thus the fellowship was a little more competitive this year. So instead we have a two thirds fellowship, which is still awesome!

What we think happened was that they gave the award to more people than usual and just trimmed down the amount allocated per person to be able to do so. We hear that AUC does that with a lot of their academic awards, but we don't mind! Two thirds is better than no thirds.

They will pay up to 6 credits of tuition for Andrew, for two years and one summer, which is a big stress-reliever. We also get two thirds of the living stipend which can be applied to rent, groceries, and transportation. Andrew's health insurance, student services, and student activities fees will also be waived.

We couldn't be happier. We're two thirds of the way to paying for Andrew's master's degree.