USA Scholarships
Scholarships in the USA - Study & Research Guides
Scholarships in the USA
The United States is home to many of the world's top-ranked universities and attracts students from every corner of the globe. Scholarship opportunities range from fully funded research positions to partial tuition awards at elite business schools. Below you'll find our guides for US scholarships, each covering eligibility, documents, benefits, and how to apply.
Stamps Scholars Program 2026 - Up to $98,000 a Year
The Stamps Scholars Program does something unusual: it splits the bill with the university. E. Roe Stamps and his late wife Penny founded it in 2006, and today the foundation and its partner schools evenly share the cost of multi-year awards worth $20,000 to $98,000 a year, which over four years comes to between $80,000 and $392,000. On top of that every scholar gets a separate enrichment fund for study abroad, academic conferences and leadership training. You cannot apply to Stamps directly, and the website says so plainly. You apply to a partner university, and at most of them the normal freshman application by the early or scholarship deadline puts you in the running automatically. Deadlines are set school by school: 1 November at Boston College and Notre Dame Early Action, 3 November for non-residents at Georgia Tech, 5 December at Tulane, 1 January at Northeastern. Financial need is not a consideration anywhere.
IEEE-USA Government Fellowship 2027 - $100,000 in DC
IEEE-USA has been sending engineers to Washington since 1973, and more than 150 of its US members have now spent a year advising Congress or the State Department. Fellows get a stipend of $95,000 plus a $5,000 relocation allowance, paid in two lump sums, and run from 1 September to 31 August. Three tracks are open: the Congressional Fellowship, the Congressional Electric Grid Policy Fellowship, and the Engineering and Diplomacy Fellowship at the US Department of State. Eligibility is narrow and specific. You need a PhD, or a master's plus five years of full-time professional experience, you must be a US citizen, and you must be an IEEE member in good standing. You also have to live in Washington for the year, because the work cannot be done remotely. Application materials for the 2027-2028 year have not been posted yet, and the previous cycle closed in early January.
ICASE Presidential Scholarship 2026 - Indiana Special Ed
The Indiana Council of Administrators of Special Education gives two $1,000 scholarships a year to people training to become special education administrators in Indiana. The pool is genuinely small, which is the point: you have to be accepted or already enrolled in a Director of Exceptional Needs licensing program in the state, and a current special education director has to nominate you. Nobody applies cold. The application window for this cycle opens on 1 October 2026 and closes on 30 December 2026, and what you submit is compact by scholarship standards: the application form, two letters of recommendation, and one essay answering a single question about what you intend to contribute as an administrator in special education. Applications are scored against a published rubric. If you are already teaching in an Indiana school and working towards a director's licence, this is one of the few awards written specifically for you.
University of Idaho Scholarship 2027 - Go Idaho! & WUE
University of Idaho does something most universities do not: it tells you what you will get before you apply. Idaho residents entering from high school are guaranteed a Go Idaho! award set purely by unweighted GPA, from $1,000 a year at 3.0 up to $7,500 a year at 3.9, held for four years on a 2.5 U of I GPA. Students from the fourteen WUE states plus Guam and the Northern Marianas get the Western Undergraduate Exchange discount worth nearly $16,000 a year, rising to almost $19,000 with a 3.9 GPA. Everyone else, including international students, is looked at for Invitation to Idaho, also worth close to $16,000 a year. None of it needs a scholarship application. You apply for admission and the awards are considered automatically, on a rolling basis, with the Fall 2027 application already open and award letters going out from late December 2026.
Horatio Alger Scholarship 2027 - $25,000 for Juniors
The Horatio Alger Association hands out 105 National Scholarships of $25,000 each, and unlike almost every other award at this size it is not looking for the strongest transcript in the room. The GPA floor is 2.0, there is no SAT or ACT requirement, and adjusted gross family income has to be $100,000 or lower. What the selection committee actually weighs is adversity: what you have been through, and what you did about it. The National Scholarship is now a high school junior award, applied for between 1 December 2026 and 1 March 2027, while seniors have their own window closing 15 February 2027 across the Association's other 70-plus programmes. One application puts you in front of every scholarship you qualify for. Two hard gates end most applications early: you must be a US citizen, with permanent residents and DREAM Act recipients excluded outright, and you need both a counselor certification and a support form from an unrelated adult over 21.
GEM Fellowship Program 2026 - Funded MS & PhD in STEM
The National GEM Consortium pairs engineering and science graduate students with the companies and universities that will pay for their degree. An Employer Fellow gets full tuition and fees from a GEM member university, a stipend of at least $16,000, and paid summer internships with the sponsoring company: up to two for a master's, at least one for a PhD, with PhD tuition covered up to the fifth year. Applications for the 2026 cycle opened on 1 July and close at 11:59 PM Eastern on 13 November 2026, the second Friday in November. Two things trip people up. You must be a US citizen or permanent resident at the time of application, and you must apply directly to at least three GEM member universities on top of the GEM application itself, by their own deadlines or 15 January, whichever comes first. Minimum GPA is 2.8 for the MS track and 3.0 for the PhD track. The GRE is strongly encouraged and not required.
ERP Scholarship 2027 - $2,500/Month for US Study
The ERP Scholarship Program sends ten to twenty German graduates a year to top US universities for a master's degree, the coursework phase of a PhD, or a research stay tied to a German dissertation. Money on the table: $2,500 a month, a $500 start-up grant, a $1,000 travel grant, and up to $25,000 per academic year towards tuition. It runs on the yield from Germany's share of the Marshall Plan, the European Recovery Program the name is short for, and has done since 1994. You do not need a US admission offer to apply, and you do not need to have held a Studienstiftung scholarship before. What you do need is a bachelor's degree awarded no more than five years ago, excellent grades, and a serious answer to why you want to work in public service. Applications for the 2027/28 academic year run from 1 July to 20 September 2026, by email only.
Yale University Scholarship 2027 - Need-Based Aid
The Yale Scholarship is the grant that sits at the centre of every Yale College financial aid offer, and the average one runs $75,220 a year. You never apply for it separately and you never pay it back. Yale reads first-year applications need-blind for every applicant anywhere in the world, then meets 100% of demonstrated need with grants rather than loans, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Families earning under $100,000 with typical assets are usually asked to pay nothing at all, and that offer covers tuition, fees, housing, food and travel, plus hospitalization insurance and a $2,000 start-up grant in the first year. Under $200,000 and tuition alone is normally covered. The gate is admission: Single-Choice Early Action and QuestBridge close 1 November 2026, Regular Decision 2 January 2027, with financial aid documents following on their own priority dates.
East-West Center Graduate Student Conference 2027 - Hawaii
The 26th East-West Center International Graduate Student Conference runs 11 to 13 February 2027 at the Hawai'i Imin International Conference Center in Honolulu, under the theme Weaving Knowledge for Shared Indo-Pacific Prosperity. Abstracts close on 30 September 2026 at 11:59 PM Hawaii time, submitted through Submittable as a 350-word abstract plus a 100-word plain-language summary. Junior and senior undergraduates, graduate students, and anyone who finished a graduate degree in the past year can submit. The conference has been student-run since 2002 and takes academic papers, creative works, performance and film, with the choice of presenting in Honolulu or live online. Nobody funds your seat. Registration was $85 in person for IGSC 2026 if you paid before 15 December, and travel, visa and lodging are yours to arrange, though EWC residence hall rooms are held for participants from $113 a night.
UNFPA Global Internship Roster 2026 - Paid UN Internships
The UNFPA Global Internship Roster 2026 is a single application that puts you in front of every hiring team at the United Nations Population Fund for a year, from the New York headquarters to regional and country offices around the world. You apply once to the roster rather than chasing individual postings, and teams pull interns from it as their needs come up. Interns who are not funded by a university, government or scholarship programme get a monthly stipend paid in local currency, sized to the duty station. What the stipend does not cover matters just as much: you arrange and pay for your own medical insurance, travel and accommodation, and you have to show proof of insurance before your first day. Eligibility is broad by UN standards. Final-year undergraduates, master's and PhD students, postgraduate professional trainees, and anyone who graduated within the past year can all apply. The roster closes 31 December 2026.
Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellowship 2027 - $65,000/yr
The Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability funds up to four postdoctoral fellows a year on three-year appointments paying $65,000 annually, with full Cornell employee benefits and a further $12,000 a year for research and travel. Applications for the 2027 cohort close on 20 October 2026 at 5pm Eastern, notifications go out in January 2027, and fellowships start between 1 June and 1 September 2027. The structure is what makes this one unusual. Every application needs two mentors lined up before you apply: a PI-eligible Cornell faculty member who is a current Cornell Atkinson Faculty Fellow, and an advisor at an external governmental, non-governmental or private sector partner, which explicitly cannot be another university. Your doctorate must be recent, no earlier than 1 May 2025 for this cycle, and the programme is no longer open to Cornell PhD graduates or Cornell postdocs.
51 Pegasi b Fellowship 2026 - $492,000 Postdoc
The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship gives an early-career planetary astronomer up to $492,000 over three years to do theoretical, observational or experimental research at a US host institution of their choosing. The Heising-Simons Foundation runs it, applications for the current cycle close on 1 October 2026 at 2pm Pacific Time, and decisions go out by mid-February. Named after the first exoplanet found orbiting a sun-like star, the fellowship covers salary and benefits and adds flexible discretionary research funding on top, which is the part fellows tend to talk about. You pick one host institution from the 28 taking part across the US. American citizenship is not required, though visa and work permit paperwork falls to you and your host rather than to the Foundation. Fellows can apply for a fourth year, or for a one-year grant if they land a faculty or permanent staff post.