USA Scholarships
Undergraduate Scholarship Guides
Undergraduate Scholarships
Guides for funded bachelor's degree programmes for international students. Each guide covers eligibility, documents, benefits, and the full application process so you know exactly what to do.
CHCI Congressional Internship Summer 2027 - Paid in DC
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute puts undergraduates and recent graduates into congressional offices on Capitol Hill for a summer, and pays properly for it. Summer 2027 interns get $4,776, furnished housing with rent and utilities covered, domestic round-trip flights to Washington, medical insurance with all premiums paid by CHCI, and a $100 a month Metro stipend. You work at least 32 hours a week in your congressional office assignment, attend an eight-day orientation and weekly leadership sessions, and complete community service hours. Applications launch on 15 August 2026 and close on 1 December 2026 for a programme running 19 May to 30 July 2027. Selection has two stages, a written application and a prerecorded interview, judged by CHCI alumni, board members and staff. Work authorisation is the hard gate: students on F-1 or M-1 visas cannot apply.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
UoPeople Scholarships 2027 - Tuition-Free US Degrees
University of the People is an accredited American online university that charges no tuition and no money for textbooks or course materials. What it does charge is a one-time $60 application fee and an assessment fee at the end of every course: $180 for undergraduate courses, $430 for M.Ed. courses and $490 for MBA and MS-IT courses. A full bachelor's degree comes to $7,260 and an MBA to $5,940. UoPeople scholarships exist to cover those fees, funded by partners including SAP, Intel, the Algorand Foundation and the Simone Biles Legacy Scholarship Fund, alongside country and refugee funds. There is no scholarship deadline. You apply for admission first, and once accepted you request a scholarship from the funding page in the Student Portal, where money is granted first-come, first-served and applied to your assessment fees until it runs out.
SHE-CAN Scholarship 2026 - Full Ride to US Colleges
SHE-CAN, short for Supporting Her Education Changes a Nation, coaches young women from Cambodia, Guatemala and Liberia into full-ride scholarships at top US colleges, then supports them through the degree and back home again. The 2026-27 cycle opened in July 2026. Cambodia and Guatemala close on 1 October 2026 and Liberia on 1 November 2026, with no application fee at any stage. Applicants must be female, aged 17 to 20, from a low-income household, with under a year of post-secondary education and strong national exam or WAEC results. What follows is long: interviews in the capital, test preparation and a community project from January to June 2027, college applications through late 2027, decisions in December 2027 and arrival in the US in August 2028. Every scholar pledges to return home within a year of graduating and work there for at least three years.
Fulbright US Student Program 2027 - 160+ Countries
The Fulbright US Student Program sends more than 2,000 Americans abroad every year to study, research or teach English, across more than 140 countries and with opportunities in over 160 countries and territories. Funded by the US Government, administered by IIE under the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, it covers round-trip travel, a living stipend set against the host country's cost of living, and accident and sickness health benefits. The 2027-2028 competition is open and the national deadline is 6 October 2026 at 5pm Eastern. If you are enrolled at a US college you cannot use that date: you apply through your campus Fulbright Program Adviser on an institutional deadline that typically falls four to six weeks earlier, with a campus interview and a chance to revise before submission.