George Lauder Bursary - The Prelude

As with any major change in someone's life, it doesn't always come at the time you expect. This was no different for me and as a result, my future career path might be altered forever!

To give more background onto this "major change" in my life, let's rewind to November 2024. I was busy working through my coursework for university when I get a message from my old Fife College lecturer, Graham. He forwarded me a link and followed with, "I think you'd be in with a good shot for this!". I curiously opened the link and was met with a page regarding a scholarship called the "George Lauder Bursary", but what is it exactly...?

What is the George Lauder Bursary?

The George Lauder Bursary is a scholarship offered by Adam Smith Scholarships (as part of Fife College) to existing and ex-students (of up to 4 years) of the college. Every year the bursary provides two lucky students with the opportunity to travel to the United States of America to live life and study in your chosen field over summer while also being fully funded throughout your time abroad. The scholarship is funded by the family of George Lauder as well as the Saint Andrew's Society of the State of New York.

Previous bursary winners Camryn and Megan

The scholarship was awarded to Camryn Provan and Megan Simpson in 2024, both of who are from my home town, Dunfermline. They went to New York City and Washington, DC respectively to study in their chosen fields of Fashion and Youth Work. They both described their time abroad as an incredible expereince with life-changing opportunites and detailed their weekly lives through their blogs created specially for their time abroad (subtle foreshadowing with the blog post you are reading currently!).

After reading about both Camryn and Megan's experience studying and living abroad, I became incredibly interested in applying for the scholarship, even without really realising what it fully entailed. However, I put my application on hold to finish and perfect my remaining coursework for my first semester at university.

The Application & Interview

After handing in my coursework at the beginning of December, I took a slight break before beginning to prepare my application for the scholarship. The deadline for the application was the 8th of January so I worked on my draft through the end of December into the beginning of January. After submitting my application, a couple days past and I was met with an email requesting that I attend an interview on the 20th of January at the college. I prepared over the following days for the interview, ensuring that I was familiar with topics such as the bursary's history, the links with the Saint Andrew's Society-, what institution I was aiming to attend, etc.

Upon attending the interview, I was met by a group of five interviewers including a couple of previous bursary receipients, two college advisors who were leads of the Adam Smith Scholarship team as well as a member of the Saint Andrew's Society. The interview went quite well and I eagerly anticipated a phone call back from the team to advise of the two chosen candidates. It wasn't until the following morning that I received a phone call from Lyn, the lead of the Scholarship team who advised that I had been successful!

This was an absolute shock to my system, I really did not expect to be even close to being considered, yet alone chosen for the opportunity. I thanked Lyn for the offer and as with all of the nerves that followed, advised that I would call her back to let her know my decision by the end of the day. After a few hours of deliberation, I called Lyn back to advise that I would be accepting the offer of the bursary for 2025!

The Next Steps...

Now that everything was setting in, I had a few objectives that I needed to achieve:

1. Apply for my chosen university

2. Determine my visa situation (What sort of visa I would be requiring)

3. Begin preperations for travelling to the United States

In addition to these objectives, I was invited to attend a lunch at the Carneige Conference Centre in Dunfermline to celebrate my award as well as the other winner, meet previous receipients of the bursary as well as formally meet the scholarship team. I would also be meeting the incredible William Garner, who is the great-great grandson of George Lauder and oversees parts of the funding, applications and acts as the main point-of-contact in the U.S for the duration of the trip. The press would also be there to photograph myself and Erin as well as gather a couple of statements to be put into the papers!

Myself and Erin photographed at the Carnegie Conference Centre

The lunch was an amazing experience! I finally met Erin Fox, the other winner of the scholarship and we had an amazing chat about life and our chosen areas of study and how excited we were for the trip. William arrived not long after and we had a lovely conversation about ourselves, he told us all about his family and heritage. He showed great interest in our areas of study, already trying to plan for what we could do during our time in the states! We finally sat to have lunch with a few members of the scholarship team including Lyn and her assistant Caitlin, other key individuals from Fife College, other previous bursary winners from over the last few years including Camryn and Megan who each delivered a presentation on their trip and experience from their time away. We were also joined by the Principle of Fife College, Jim Metcalfe who personally congratulated both myself and Erin on our awards.

Following the lunch it was time to begin completing my main objectives, starting with my application to the university/institute I wished to attend. New York is a huge hub for all things music, so it was only right to look at attending the very best institute in the city to learn from their incredible lecturers, alumni and have a chance to utilise their world-class facilities. This place is none other than the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, a subsidary institute of New York University. I was required to submit a personal statement to advise why I thought I would be a good fit to attend the insitute, I was also allowed to optionally attach any supporting materials I felt were relevant to my application so I chose to attach this website/portfolio and my personal Google Drive containing a few projects which have not yet been released. After a couple of drafts of my statement, I submitted this ahead of the application deadline and waited eagerly to hear back.

In addition to my application, I discovered that I would require a specific type of visa to legally enter the United States, that being an F-1 student visa. All previous bursary winners have travelled to the U.S on an ESTA (visa waiver) as they had done courses which either were less than 18 hours of study per week or non-creditted. The courses that I wanted to do did not meet the criteria for either area and NYU set this out as a mandatory requirement for any students, regardless of circumstance. So this was another step that I would need to tackle in order to make this work. In other news, I finally heard back from NYU regarding my application while on a late night walk - I was accepted! This was a great relief off of my chest to have a confirmed place and to know I would be attending one of the finest institutes in the world for audio engineering and music production!

The Visa Application Saga...

While I had been formally accepted into NYU, there was still another obstacle to tackle which was obtaining my F-1 visa. There were a few requirements that I required before I began my application which included obtaining a few key documents. Once I had obtained these I was able to begin my visa application via the U.S Department of State website and part of the application involved attending an interview at a U.S embassy or consulate. We discovered that while there is a U.S consulate in Edinburgh, they do not deal with any visa applications so this meant I was required to travel to either London or Belfast to complete the interview. Unfortunately there were not many options for getting an interview booked quickly, at the time of booking the earliest interview was a minimum of 3 weeks to wait which doesn't seem like a lot but when your expected departure to the U.S was less than 3 weeks after the intended visa interview date it felt extremely tight for time!

My visa interview appointment was scheduled for Monday 12th of May at 11:30am and as expected I was already prepared well in advance with all of my documentation ready. However something unexpected happened the Friday before the interview...I received an email from the embassy around 9:30pm saying that my inteview date was now on Friday 16th of May at 7:30am. This was incredibly strange to receive and intitially seemed to be a mistake or accident. Firstly I was receiving this email past business hours with little to no notice and the time that the supposed "new interview" time was scheduled for was before the embassy's registered opening hours on Google. In addition to this the embassy was closed over the weekend so there was no way to contact them to confirm whether it was a legitimate change. I advised Lyn about the email and we both agreed that it appeared to be some sort of mistake and we opted to continue to attend on the Monday, hoping that even if it was legitimate, they would be able to accomodate as we had prebooked flights to London and I was travelling all the way from Scotland.

The 12th arrived and I woke up early to catch my 6am flight down to London Stansted. Upon arriving at the airport I caught the Stansted Express down to Tottenham Hale followed by catching the Victoria underground line through to Vauxhall where I walked to the U.S embassy for 11am. Upon arriving at the embassy I got into line and after handing over my documents for inspection, I was met with incredibly dissapointing news. Unfortunately the unexpected email was correct, I along with 70 others had been rescheduled to Friday with effectively little-to-no notice, explanation or offer of compensation.

While this was an obvious setback and not what I had hoped to hear, there was no point on dwelling on what couldn't be changed so instead I decided to make the most of my time in London and go sightseeing, shopping and exploring as my flight was not until 9:30pm. I had only been to London once in my life for a festival so I never got a chance to properly look around so I went around visiting landmarks such as Buckingham Palace, Trafalger Square, Big Ben and Westminster. I enjoyed shopping on Oxford Street and picked up some t-shirts and other bits and bobs. I finished the day by visiting one of the local Wetherspoons to grab a bite to eat and a drink before catching my return flight back to Edinburgh.

Now in order to make the early 7:30am timeslot on Friday 16th, I was going to have to travel down to London the day before as there were no flights or trains that would get me down in time. Instead of flying, this time around I opted to get the train from Edinburgh Waverly to London Kings Cross as this would allow me to avoid the travel between Stansted and the city centre and also offer me more options for returning back to Scotland at a reasonable time. I caught a train at 3:30pm and arrived in London just after 8:30pm, doing one last stretch to my hotel in Clapham Junction before grabbing some dinner and heading straight to bed to prepare for the early morning.

I woke up around 6am and quickly prepared myself for the interview, hoping that there would not be any further issues. I hopped in an Uber and arrived at the embassy just after 7am and eagerly waited for the doors to open. Finally after 20 minutes they began allowing everyone to get their documents checked and ready for going into the building. Thankfully I had no issues this time and proceeded into the embassy, going through airport-style security and past a couple of checkpoints where they verified the exact documents I needed to show to the consulate officer at my interview. I continuted through the building where I then had my fingerprints scanned and finally waitied in line for my interview. My interview with officer lasted no more than 2 minutes (seriously!) before I was advised that my visa application had been accepted! It was such a relief to finally have all of my documentation sorted after such a stressful couple of weeks. The rest of my day involved heading back to the hotel to check out, get some food before my train back to Edinburgh in the early afternoon.

All that was left to do was see out my remaining weeks in Scotland, spending time with my friends and family before I left for New York on the 6th of June!

Stay tuned for my first blog post from NYC...!