Ozioma Sarah Eze, a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, has won a fully funded Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Scholarship, despite holding a second-class lower degree. She announced the award on LinkedIn on 22nd September 2026.
Ozioma will study Service Design Strategies and Innovations (SDSI), a two-year program at four European institutions: the Art Academy of Latvia, the University of Lapland in Finland, the Estonian Academy of Arts, and the Stockholm School of Economics.
Ozioma graduated in 2023 from the Department of Pure and Industrial Chemistry with a CGPA of 3.21 out of 5.00, then spent 2 years preparing applications to US universities. However, changes in visa policy ended that plan.
She subsequently learned about SDSI just three weeks before the deadline. According to her, she felt exhausted and first considered not applying. “Many times, I wondered if I was ever going to make it,” she wrote.
Eventually, she encouraged herself. “It is better for the admissions committee to reject me than for me to reject myself,” she stated.
Ozioma stopped apologizing for her grade and began building her application on five years of work as a product and UX designer, a narrowly defined research problem, and a motivation video. She wrote that these “speak louder than an old transcript.”
She emerged as one of 15 applicants who won merit-based, fully funded places out of nearly 1,000 applicants worldwide. The offer letter says the program selected her for a scholarship that includes a monthly stipend and full tuition into the Class of 2026, which started on September 7.
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Eze thanked SDSI alumni Joshua Olulowo and Joan Yieke, who explained what the program valued. She also thanked friends and mentors who ran mock interviews with her.
She advised other applicants to use online resources and community support. “If your numbers aren’t perfect, your evidence and narrative must be,” she wrote.
She closed her post with this line: “An application is an argument about your future, not an apology for your past.”
