USA Scholarships
Partial Funding Scholarship Guides
Partial Funding Scholarships
Not every scholarship covers 100% of your costs, but partial funding can still make a huge difference. The scholarships listed here cover a significant share of tuition or living expenses, reducing what you need to pay out of pocket.
AAUW Research Publication Grant 2027 - $8,000 Award
The AAUW Research Publication Grant 2027, formally the American Short-Term Research Publication Grant, pays women scholars $8,000 in a single tranche to get a research manuscript ready for publication. The money covers drafting, editing, replicating research and answering reviewers, and can also go on housing, food and dependent care while you write. All fields qualify, with STEM researchers and those working on gender issues especially encouraged. You need a doctoral or terminal degree already in hand, US citizenship or permanent residency, and sole or first authorship on the manuscript. Applications open 17 August 2026 and close 30 September 2026 at 5pm ET, with awards announced in April 2027.
University of Florida Scholarship 2027 - Up to $80,000
The University of Florida Scholarship 2027 is the set of merit awards UF hands to admitted freshmen with no separate application. Presidential awards run $5,000, $8,000 or $10,000 a year, and out-of-state tuition waivers run up to $20,000 a year through the Gator Nation Scholarship, worth $80,000 across four years. Alongside them sit the invitation-only John V. Lombardi and Stamps scholarships for Honors admits, the need-based Machen Florida Opportunity Scholars package, and a $500 National Merit award. Roughly one in ten admitted freshmen gets a merit scholarship. Apply by the 1 November 2026 Early Action deadline for Fall 2027 entry, and offers land by mid-March 2027.
NIU Political Science Scholarship 2027 - Awards & Funding
The NIU Political Science Scholarship 2027 is the funding the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University puts in front of its own students, from named undergraduate scholarships awarded through the MyScholarships portal to graduate assistantships worth at least $14,000 a year for doctoral students. Undergraduates are matched to political science awards by filing one general application, which opens 15 November 2026 with a priority deadline of 31 January 2027. Graduate applicants apply to the MA or PhD by 15 January and are considered for assistantship support in the spring. Six named departmental graduate awards, including the Martin David Dubin Memorial Scholarship and the $1,000 Russell W. Smith Memorial Endowment, close on 1 March.
ACI Foundation Scholarship 2026 - $5,000 to $10,000
The ACI Foundation funds students heading into the concrete industry, and it runs more than thirty named awards through one shared student application portal with one set of core requirements. Scholarship recipients get a $5,000 educational stipend for tuition, residence, books and materials. Fellowship recipients get $10,000 plus paid travel to two ACI Conventions. Two Middle East awards sit alongside them at $7,000 and $5,000 with regional travel and certification included. The window is open now: applications opened on 1 July 2026 and close on 1 November 2026, with no late applications accepted. What you submit is compact but strict, a resume, a 500-word essay on your long-term career interest in concrete, official transcripts sent by the institution rather than by you, and two endorsements of which at least one must come from an ACI member. Fellowship finalists are interviewed in person at the spring ACI Concrete Convention, with travel paid.
Michigan AI Explorers Program 2027 - PhD Prep Mentorship
The Michigan Artificial Intelligence Lab runs the AI Explorers Program to get talented pre-doctoral students into top PhD programmes, and it is built around output rather than lectures. Over six to nine months you work on mentored research with a weekly meeting, present progress at monthly cohort sessions, and attend monthly or bimonthly ACL mentorship sessions on research skills, career pathways and graduate admissions. You leave with two concrete things: one research paper ready to submit to a workshop, conference or journal, and a full graduate school application package covering statement of purpose, CV and research statement. Mentors are junior faculty, postdocs, senior PhD students and industry researchers, each taking one or two students. Applicants must be 18 or older by the start date, with preference for final-year Bachelor's and MS students. The 2026 round is closed and applications reopen in late 2026.
Balanced Man Scholarship 2026 - Up to $10,000 by Chapter
Sigma Phi Epsilon runs the Balanced Man Scholarship at more than 140 US universities, awarding over 500 scholarships worth around $300,000 in a year. The award goes to students living what SigEp calls a balanced life, a Sound Mind and a Sound Body, judged on academic excellence, leadership and a real commitment to health and well-being. The single most misunderstood thing about it is stated plainly on SigEp's own pages: there is no obligation to join or affiliate with the fraternity to apply or to win. Amounts and rules are set chapter by chapter, so Florida offers $10,000 to incoming freshmen with a 3.2 GPA, Cincinnati $6,000, Wisconsin-Madison $5,000. Deadlines are local too, with 1 June the early date at most schools and some chapters still open into the summer. The application is short by design: roughly 15 minutes, and at some chapters no essays at all.
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.
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.
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.