There’s been little rumblings for ages around these parts about the North American focus of the Google initiatives aimed at computing students. For example, Summer of Code is in the northern summer during the northern long university vacations. One that’s always rankled a bit for me personally is the Anita Borg scholarships being limited to female students in the United States.
Well, no more. Google Australia has announced Google Australia Anita Borg scholarships open to female students at Australian universities, entry closing September 15. I’ll be applying if I can find even a moment to try and fufil their fairly hefty entry criteria. The money isn’t as good as the US one (AU$5000 as opposed to US$10000), which is actually irrelevant to me for silly reasons, so that’s OK. (If I get other scholarships in any form totalling more than 75% of the value of my Australian Postgraduate Award, I have to forfeit the scholarship money from my APA. So the difference between a small-ish and big-ish scholarship is removed. I’m happy to accept truly huge ones of course, and the APA can be damned.)