USA Scholarships
December Deadline Scholarships
December Deadline Scholarships
Scholarships and fellowships with application deadlines in December. Plan ahead and submit your applications before the year-end rush.
Mastercard Internship 2027 - Paid US Summer Roles
Mastercard runs paid internships across eleven categories, from software engineering and cybersecurity to consulting, finance, product management and marketing, in more than 40 countries and with placements running anywhere from a few weeks to a full year. The US summer programme is the one most students want. Eligibility is stated plainly: you must be currently enrolled in a bachelor's or master's degree and set to complete your studies the year after you intern. Postings for a given summer start appearing the previous autumn, and applications are reviewed on a rolling basis rather than against a closing date, so the practical deadline is whenever the seats fill. One rule ends a lot of applications early: many Mastercard intern postings state they are not eligible for work authorization sponsorship, so you must already be able to work in the US without it.
Yale World Fellows Program 2027 - Fully Funded
The Yale World Fellows Program brings a small group of mid-career leaders from outside the United States to Yale for four months, mid-August to mid-December, on a package that covers a living stipend, a furnished one- or two-bedroom apartment, medical insurance and round-trip international travel, with no tuition or fees. The Class of 2026 held 16 Fellows, picked from several thousand applications, and the programme has taken over 400 Fellows from 102 countries since 2002. You need to be a citizen of a country other than the United States, between five and twenty-five years into your career, fluent in English, and free to live in New Haven for the whole term. Applications for the 2027 cohort are not open yet. Nominations are, and anyone can submit one without any Yale connection.
Jefferson Scholarship 2027 - Full Ride to UVA
The Jefferson Scholarship covers the full cost of four years at the University of Virginia, worth more than $42,000 a year for Virginia residents and more than $83,000 a year for everyone else, which comes to roughly $230,000 and $405,000 across a degree. The Jefferson Scholars Foundation runs it, and there is one hard rule that catches most people out: you cannot apply. Schools nominate, one senior per school per year for the Jefferson award, and 7,697 secondary schools were invited to nominate in the 2025-26 cycle. Counselor and nominee materials are due 1 December 2026 for most of the 65-plus regions, and 15 November 2026 for the At-Large and International At-Large regions. Regional interviews run from mid-December through January, final interviews are held virtually in late February 2027, and financial need plays no part in who wins.
Horowitz Foundation Grant 2026 - $10,000 for PhDs
The Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy gives $10,000 to PhD candidates at the dissertation stage whose research speaks to contemporary social policy. The money arrives in two parts: $7,500 when you are selected, and $2,500 once the project is finished. Applications close on 1 December 2026 at 11:59pm EST, which is also the deadline for your recommender to file, and winners are announced the following June. Eligibility is tight in one direction and unusually open in another. You must be a current PhD or DrPH candidate who has defended a proposal or had a topic approved, and anyone who already holds a PhD is out. But there is no citizenship rule and no institutional one: applicants can come from any country and any university in the world. The application itself is short, built around a 750-word project description.
FSU Admissions Scholarships 2026 - Up to $115,808
Florida State University runs about ten first-year admissions scholarships, and most of them arrive without you filling in anything beyond the admissions application. The largest is the Presidential Scholars award at roughly $115,808 over four years including an out-of-state tuition waiver. National Merit Finalists get the full in-state cost of attendance if they are Florida residents, worth $16,000 to $25,000 a year, or a package around $91,808 over four years if they are not. Below those sit merit and talent out-of-state tuition waivers at 100% and 50%, a $16,000 Vires award for Florida residents, $8,000 for an IB diploma, a $4,000 Sunshine Award, and $6,000 plus experiential funding on the invitation-only QUEST and Illuminate programmes. Apply by 1 December for the best shot. National Merit Finalists have a separate job: list FSU as first choice by 1 May.
Columbia University Free Online Courses 2026 - ColumbiaX
Columbia University free online courses are published under ColumbiaX, the university's online learning initiative on edX, where every listed course can be audited at no cost and a verified certificate is available for a fee. The school page currently lists 28 courses drawn from Columbia Business School, Columbia Engineering, the Mailman School of Public Health, the history department and Teachers College, covering corporate finance, the maths behind AI, Python and data structures, pediatric HIV, child protection, climate science, US history and inclusive teaching. Nothing here behaves like a scholarship: no application form, no deadline, no committee, no GPA and no citizenship rule. Money only enters at the certificate, and edX financial assistance is the route to a discount on that fee.
Five Rings Quantitative Researcher Internship 2027
The Five Rings Summer Intern 2027 Quantitative Researcher role is a nine-week paid PhD internship in New York, running from the beginning of June to the beginning of August 2027. Five Rings lists the annual base salary at $300,000, roughly $52,000 across the nine weeks, plus a sign-on bonus and corporate housing. Interns work with the research team on development projects with a mentor fully dedicated to them, alongside classroom instruction, in-house strategy games and a series of talks on key trading concepts. The hard gate is the degree: you must be working towards a PhD in computer science, mathematics, physics, statistics, economics or another qualifying field, with basic programming experience from academia or an internship. Note that unlike the sibling quantitative trader posting, this one carries no statement welcoming applicants from outside the US.
Five Rings Quantitative Internship 2027 - 9 Paid Weeks
The Five Rings Summer Intern 2027 Quantitative Trader programme is a nine-week paid internship in New York, running from the beginning of June to the beginning of August 2027. Five Rings lists the annual base salary at $300,000, which works out at roughly $52,000 across the nine weeks, and adds a sign-on bonus and corporate housing on top. Interns work with the trading team on research and development projects, mentored by full-time traders, alongside classroom instruction, in-house strategy games, mock trading and a series of talks on core trading concepts. The eligibility bar is narrow on timing and wide on geography: you need to graduate in winter 2027 or spring or summer 2028, and Five Rings states directly that students outside the US are eligible to apply even though the internship runs in New York.
Amazon Operations Finance Internship 2027 - Paid 12 Weeks
The 2027 Amazon Operations Finance Rotational Program Summer Internship is a paid 12-week placement based in Seattle, Washington or Arlington, Virginia, starting in May or June 2027. Interns join a finance team supporting one part of the supply chain, such as Customer Fulfillment, Amazon Logistics or Amazon Air, and own a single project that gets attention from senior leadership. Amazon lists the Seattle pay as $80,200 to $99,300 a year, which is roughly $18,500 to $22,900 across a 12-week internship. You need to be enrolled in a bachelor's degree in finance, economics, industrial engineering, accounting, supply chain, operations, business, mathematics or a related field, graduating between December 2027 and June 2028. Two details catch people out: despite the name the internship itself is not rotational, and Amazon states it cannot offer visa sponsorship for this role.
UC Berkeley Free Online Courses 2027 - BerkeleyX on edX
UC Berkeley free online courses run through BerkeleyX on the edX platform, where every course can be audited at no cost and a verified certificate is available for a fee. Berkeley joined the edX consortium in 2012 and has since put more than 100 classes in front of 4 million learners across 150 countries and regions, from The Science of Happiness and Introduction to Python to Fundamentals of Economics, Academic and Business Writing and Psychedelics and the Mind. Nothing here works like a scholarship: there is no application, no deadline, no selection and no GPA, and enrolment is open all year. The closest thing to funding is edX financial assistance, which discounts the verified certificate fee for learners who would find it a hardship, applied for one course at a time. Auditing needs nothing but a free account.
Nathan Cummings Foundation Grant 2026 - $50k to $250k
The Nathan Cummings Foundation grant programme funds organisations working on racial, economic and environmental justice in the United States, with most grants between $50,000 and $250,000. The Letter of Inquiry portal is open year-round with rolling review, and staff aim to come back to applicants within 12 weeks. Three grant types run alongside each other: Venture Grants up to $100,000 for one year, Advancement Grants up to $250,000 a year for up to two years, and invitation-only Enterprise Grants above $250,000 a year for longer. Program Related Investments run separately at $250,000 to $750,000, usually repaid over three to seven years. Read the exclusion list before anything else, because NCF does not fund individuals, 501(c)(4) organisations, direct service work outside an advocacy strategy, campus or prison-based programmes, or conservation projects.
Tech Journalism Fund 2026 - $5,000 to $25,000 Grants
The Tech Journalism Fund 2026 is Omidyar Network's project grant for US-based journalists reporting on technology and society, paying $5,000 to $25,000 towards the cost of a single resource-intensive story. Freelancers, staff reporters, editors and whole teams are eligible across any medium. The money covers reporting costs rather than salary: travel, research and fact-checking support, multimedia work, data access such as LexisNexis searches and government record requests, and a stipend for the reporting time itself. Priority goes to pitches on AI regulation and tech policy, investigations into the companies and people shaping the AI industry, the effect of AI on children and families, and how workers and unions are dealing with AI at work. Applications run on a rolling basis with no deadline and are usually reviewed within 30 days. Every funded project stays editorially independent and discloses the support.