One of the key areas of the new financial model linked to the Competitiveness Reform Program is the knowledge-based society. The Magyar Nemzeti Bank also intends to contribute to this by establishing an excellence scholarship program, bearing in mind that one of the main challenges for the education system is to prepare young people for a future state of the labour market that is becoming increasingly difficult to predict due to accelerating development.
The Excellence Scholarship Program was launched in 2016 by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank.
The Excellence Scholarship is open to a maximum of 3-3 percent of full-time students with state scholarship or self-paying, who study economics in the undergraduate and the master's degree programs in Hungarian or in English, and provide outstanding academic, scientific and community performance.
Applications are announced each year by the universities and awarded by a jury. The scholarship is for 10 months. From the second half of the academic year 2018/2019, the monthly amount of support per capita increased from HUF 30,000 to HUF 40,000.
The number of Excellence Scholars has been steadily increasing. In the 2016/2017 academic year 408 students, in the 2017/2018 academic year 424 students, in the 2018/2019 academic year 475 students, in the 2019/2020 academic year 515 students and in the 2020/2021 academic year 541 students received MNB Excellence Scholarships.
The diploma for winning the scholarship is presented traditionally in the framework of a diploma transfer conference organized by the MNB.