Plans to apply for a scholarship - advantage or disadvantage

[yevgeny]

Is it an advantage or a disadvantage
(a) for the chances of admission
(b) for the financial aid offered
if I mention in the application form that I am planning to apply for some external scholarship?
It won't be known before the time of the admission decisions whether I get that scholarship or not. I am applying to several top universities for Ph.D. in Physics.

Thanks,
Yevgeny.

[rstr44]

yevgeny,

I don't know what this is like for your field, but I have the same issue in another field - political science.

My gut feeling, although this must be qualified by my complete lack of knowledge about your field, is that it can't hurt. For (a) I don't know. At worst, I think it wouldn't make any difference. But it might also demonstrate that you have ambition, that you are going for the external scholarship. For (b) my feeling is that the program/university would probably make a decision about financial aid first, and then if you get an external scholarship, they might reduce it slightly. But I don't knwo for sure. The best way to find this information out is to ask the programs or universities themselves. Just call up the admissions contact for the departments or graduate schools and ask how this sort of thing is handled, hypothetically.