Claim: The University of Oslo fully funded scholarship 2022/2023
Verdict: False
Full Text: There’s a message circulating via WhatsApp purporting a fully-funded
scholarship program offered by the government of Norway.
The
message has been shared by WhatsApp users. The content of the message claims
enormous scholarship benefits ranging from full tuition fee, living allowance,
accommodation, medical facilities, and traveling
allowance to “unlimited study
permits”.
The
website imitates the branding of the Norway-based university. It promises free
scholarships through a program to enable international students to study a
course of their choice.
Applicants
are asked to fill out a form capturing information such as their name, email
address, country of residence, and desired course of study.
When
a user clicks on the “Apply Now” button, a notification pops up informing the
applicant that their application has been received. Further instructions to
answer three questions before proceeding to the next page where they will
select universities of their choice are given.
The
questions require the user to provide information about their level of
education, age and
to select a state where they will study in Norway from among the given choices.
The
next step after sending the invitation is to click the “Generate Visa Form”
button. A warning at the bottom of the page states the Visa Form page will not
load if the users do not complete the step correctly.
The message to be shared contains a link to the dubious
website and a message encouraging people to click on it to apply for the
scholarship. It also details what the scholarship will cover including
full tuition, living allowance, accommodation, and unlimited work permit —
information that is not available on the website.
Verification:
There
is no information about the giveaway on the legitimate website of the University of Oslo, and
its Facebook and Twitter pages.
Additionally,
the domain name of the website is intelligencenews.com.ng. The legitimate
domain name of the University of Oslo website is uio.no.
.ng
is the country-code Top Level Domain (cc-TLD) for Nigeria. The WHOIS information of the impostor
website shows that it was created on January 2, 2021, in Nigeria.
The WHOIS information
of the legitimate website shows that it was created on November 15, 1999.
StudyGreen, a website with a 75% trust score as
seen on Scam adviser, claims that the University of Oslo offers an annual scholarship program
for international students with outstanding performance.
The website last advertised that
scholarship offer on March 16, 2021.
Conclusion: Beware, the WhatsApp Message claiming
that Oslo is providing scholarships for international students is False and a Scam.
