Open Philanthropy Undergraduate Scholarship - New Application Round (2023/24)

How was the list of universities determined?

Will you push (or help) students to apply to "Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Amherst, Dartmouth, and Bowdoin" and other top universities that offer enough financial assistance? Getting them into one of those seems far cheaper than paying for their tuition at an expensive university without enough financial assistance.

Are there enough excellent universities or programs with enough financial assistance globally that you should just focus on helping students get into those instead of funding them to attend the top universities without enough financial assistance?

(EDIT: To be clear, by "enough financial assistance", I mean that the cost for the student after any needs-based aid, scholarships and help from their parents will be low enough to not be a significant deterrent to attending.)

This is a good programme but I think and strongly feel that the number of people that could be helped would be much higher if the programme was more global than just focused on the US and UK. Additionally, the value for money is higher in LMICs and hence impact is greater. For context the cost of tuition plus other fees for one person to attend Harvard for 4 years is roughly more than $300,000. This amount of money for example could fully pay for 50 undergraduate students for 4 years at top universities in Africa. So, if 10 awardees are selected for US/UK, the cost would be equivalent to 500 students in Africa for example being fully sponsored.

I am not implying that students in US and UK shouldn't receive scholarships but rather that a global eligibility could introduce a balance that would increase the ROI for each dollar spent.

Does there exist an equivalent for Master's degrees?