30 Rejections, One Yes: The Real Story of How a Nigerian Student Won the Mastercard Foundation Scholarship

Every scholarship database, every "how to apply" guide, every checklist all skip the part that actually determines whether most applicants keep going or quit: the rejections in between.

Olatomide Ojajune's story is a real one, not a composite. She recently graduated from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada with a Master of Sustainable Forest Management, as a scholar under the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program. She shared her full journey publicly on LinkedIn, and it's worth telling in detail because it's honest in a way most scholarship success stories aren't.

It Didn't Start With a Win

Before UBC, before Canada, before the scholarship offer letter, there was Nigeria, and over 30 scholarship rejections.

For years, Olatomide believed studying abroad would open doors she couldn't yet see. So she kept applying. Some applications took weeks to prepare, pulling together transcripts, essays, and recommendation letters, only for most of them to end the same way: "No."

If you're currently sitting with a string of rejection emails and wondering whether it's worth continuing, this is the part of her story that matters most, not the eventual win, but the willingness to apply again after application number twenty-nine didn't work either.

The Offer Wasn't the Finish Line

When the acceptance finally came, from the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at UBC's Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, it looked, from the outside, like the end of the struggle. Olatomide has said that people around her treated the offer as a finish line, but she has come to see it differently: opportunities don't remove challenges, they simply introduce new ones.

That reframing is worth sitting with. A scholarship offer doesn't hand you an easy life abroad. It hands you a new, different kind of hard: unfamiliar academic expectations, a new climate, distance from home, and the pressure of representing an opportunity you fought thirty rejections to get.

What Two Years in Canada Actually Looked Like

She arrived in Canada in 2025 carrying excitement, gratitude, and a suitcase full of expectations. What followed, in her own description, was one of the most demanding and rewarding periods of her life.

Her program wasn't confined to lecture halls. Studying sustainable forest management meant real time outdoors, in forests, in rain, in snow and mud, alongside the coursework, assignments, and leadership responsibilities that came with being a Mastercard Foundation scholar. She has spoken about moments of real uncertainty too: missing home more than she expected, and having to remind herself why she started in the first place.

Somewhere in the middle of the lectures, the field trips, and the countless cups of coffee, something shifted for her: she describes moving away from constantly focusing on where she wanted to end up, and toward appreciating who she was becoming along the way.

Walking the Stage

Last week, Olatomide walked across the graduation stage at UBC. Not, as she put it, as the person who left Nigeria, but as someone shaped by every rejection, every opportunity, and every person who believed in her along the way. Her own conclusion from the whole experience is simple and worth repeating to anyone deep in the scholarship application grind: the degree is only part of the achievement. The real achievement is having the persistence to keep going long enough to see the dream become real.

Her post resonated widely, with people across her network congratulating her and reflecting on how opportunities, once won, tend to introduce new forms of growth rather than simply removing difficulty.

What This Means If You're Still in the "30 Rejections" Stage

We don't share this story to suggest that persistence alone guarantees a scholarship. Timing, funding availability, and program fit all play a real role too. But Olatomide's journey does point to a few concrete truths worth holding onto if you're applying right now:

• A string of rejections is not unusual, and it isn't a verdict. Even scholars who go on to win competitive, fully-funded awards often collect dozens of "no's" first.
• The application process itself builds the resilience the opportunity will later demand. The discipline of applying again and again is the same discipline that carries scholars through demanding programs abroad.
• Winning changes the type of challenge you face, not whether you face one. Go in prepared for a hard, rewarding season, not a finish line.
• Document your journey as you go. Part of why this story exists at all is because Olatomide chose to share it. Your own story, once you're on the other side of your application, could be exactly what the next applicant needs to read.

Source: Olatomide Ojajune's story was originally shared on her LinkedIn profile 

Are you a scholarship recipient with a story to share? ScolaVault would love to feature your journey. Real stories help the next applicant keep going. Reach out through our Contact Us page.