Kiwi students win $12m in overseas scholarship offers from United States and British universities

Antonia Young has won a $300,000 Robertson Scholarship to Duke University in North Carolina. Photo supplied

Kiwi students have pulled in overseas scholarship offers worth more than $12 million this year, a private tutoring company says.

Crimson Education, which helps students apply to American and British universities, says 64 NZ students have received scholarship offers totalling $12.4m this year, up from $8.7m offered to 38 students last year.

The figures, all in NZ dollars, include offers from multiple overseas universities to many of the students, so the actual amounts paid out will be much less.

But the individual scholarships are still substantial. Antonia Young, head girl at St Cuthbert's last year, has won a Robertson Scholarship to Duke University in North Carolina worth $300,000.

Young, a New Zealand representative water polo player, had already won another scholarship to Sydney University, but told Crimson she would give it up to go to the US partly because American colleges "have such a great water-polo culture".

King's College dux Amay Aggarwal, who is now studying Mandarin in China, has received offers to three top US universities and two in Britain.

Amay Aggarwal has received offers from multiple US and UK universities. Photo supplied

Crimson supported four of the 10 premier award winners in last year's NZ Scholarship exams to win places overseas, including two from Macleans College in Howick, In Gyu Lee and Yibin Zhang.

Crimson founder Jamie Beaton, a former King's College dux, said the growing numbers of Kiwis heading offshore to study reflected "a lot more awareness" of the opportunities.

"Two years ago there was literally a handful of kids heading overseas. Many of these top schools haven't had that many Kiwis heading over," he said.

Crimson faces a High Court liquidation hearing in Auckland next week over a dispute with a former employee, Samantha Berry. The company said last month that the dispute was over only $2250 and a spokeswoman said today that it was likely to be settled before the hearing date.