ERP Scholarship 2027 - $2,500/Month for US Study

What is the ERP Scholarship?

The ERP Scholarship is a German award with an unusually direct historical line behind it. ERP stands for European Recovery Program, which almost nobody calls it, because the world knows it as the Marshall Plan: more than $13 billion the United States put into post-war Western Europe from 1948, meant to build peace through prosperity and tie the two sides of the Atlantic together economically. Germany's share of that fund was never spent down. It sits today with the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and since 1994 its annual yield has paid for a scholarship sending German graduates the other way, to study in the United States. The Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes runs it, and awards ten to twenty places a year.

What it pays is specific enough to plan around. A monthly scholarship of $2,500, a one-off start-up grant of $500, a travel grant of $1,000, and a contribution of up to $25,000 per academic year towards tuition. Read that last one carefully, because it is a ceiling rather than a promise of full coverage, and plenty of US master's programmes charge more than that in a year. The Studienstiftung expects it: combining ERP with a DAAD award or a scholarship from the US university itself is explicitly allowed, and at the expensive end of the market it is closer to necessary. Alongside the money you get admission to the Studienstiftung and its course programmes, a place in a worldwide ERP alumni network, a kick-off event in Berlin before you leave, a virtual one when you arrive, and an annual gathering of holders in the USA.

Three kinds of project qualify. A one to two-year master's at a US university or college. The coursework phase of a PhD, which means the first year if you already hold a master's, or up to 21 months if you were admitted to a PhD straight from a bachelor's. Or a ten to twelve-month research stay in the US as part of a dissertation registered at a German university. Take the two-year master's route and a two or three-month public sector internship is expected between the two years, so build it in early rather than scrambling in your second spring. What does not qualify is worth knowing before you write anything: postdoctoral projects, one or two-semester US visits that form part of a German master's, medical doctoral theses done before completing the medical degree, artistic studies in music, art, drama or film, and anything at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, which belongs to the sister McCloy Program instead.

Two features make this easier to apply for than it looks. You do not need a US admission offer at the time of application, and you do not need to have held a Studienstiftung scholarship before. What you do need is a bachelor's degree by the deadline, a most recent degree certificate dated within the last five years, excellent grades, and a public service direction you can actually evidence. Ministries, authorities, foundations, think tanks, international organisations, NGOs, science and research: those are the destinations the programme is building a network towards, and paths that cross between public and private sectors count too. For the 2027/28 academic year the window runs from 1 July to 20 September 2026, application documents are refreshed the day it opens, and everything goes in as a single PDF by email. Pre-selection is on paper, then promising applicants get a selection seminar, which is where ten to twenty places actually get decided. If you are weighing US options more broadly, the Yale University Scholarship guide covers what need-based aid at a US university looks like from the other side, and the GWI Scholars Program guide is another route for international graduates. Full details and the application pack sit on the official Studienstiftung ERP page.