SEARCHING FOR EXTERNAL, NATIONALLY COMPETITIVE SCHOLARSHIPS AND FELLOWSHIPS

From:  James Duban  | Associate Dean for Research and National Scholarships | TAMS and the Honors College |Director, Office for Nationally Competitive Scholarships

Dear UNT Students (undergraduate and graduate):

Nationally competitive scholarships can help fund your education and bring added distinction to you, your résumé, and UNT. Thanks to the Internet and to the public availability of websites, highly advanced search engines bring the information about these scholarships to your disposal. Still, finding an opportunity is just the beginning.

The UNT Office for Nationally Competitive Scholarships stands ready to work with you and your faculty mentors by offering feedback on style, tone, and organization on any essay you plan to submit for competition. You will enhance your writing skills and arrive at a better sense of your future plans and commitments. Moreover, undergraduates will find that they can adapt national-scholarship narratives to graduate-school admissions essays, with better chances of garnering internal fellowship support. Graduate students, in turn, end up transforming their scholarship proposals into the theoretical introductions to their master’s theses or doctoral dissertations.  Stated otherwise, the process of applying for a nationally competitive scholarship is a “no lose” scenario, relative to the writing you will undertake and refine.

You may proceed, as follows to learn the opportunities available to you. You may access those through the following internet sites. (While you are at liberty to visit these sites, including those of other universities, kindly address any questions you have about these awards to me, at james.duban@unt.edu. Other universities must attend to their own students.) This search may well take several days; don’t let that deter you. In days before the Internet, the search would have taken several months or years.

  1. Visit my home page https://honors.unt.edu/office-nationally-competitive-scholarships or https://honors.unt.edu/office-nationally-competitive-scholarships/how-proceed for an overview of high-profile scholarships.
  2. Graduate students should start with https://www.grad.illinois.edu/fellowship/. Both graduate students and undergraduates should then consult https://spin.infoedglobal.com  and http://guides.library.unt.edu/grants  
  3. The following website (U. Maryland) allows you to search by multiple categories, with hypertext links to the scholarship sponsors:  http://www.scholarships.umd.edu. Click on the categories to the right, and then click on the optimal sub-category. Study those opportunities, scholarship-by-scholarship, before moving on to any of the sites below.  If you try to do too much at once, the search will appear overwhelming.
  4. Then visit http://www.gradschool.cornell.edu/fellowships
    • ​Search by field of study, etc., clicking on the hypertext of each fellowship
    • Click on each hypertext to view a description of the award, the amount of award, and deadlines.
    • Copy the title of the award
    • Paste the title into a Google that title to obtain application forms or upload instructions. 
    • If applicable, also search, in the category box, for scholarships for “International Students,”    "Scholarships for Women"—or “Scholarships for Minorities.” 

For more scholarships for women and minorities, please check:

Additional resources for International Students include the following:

Visit, as well, the following links, where you can search for opportunities under multiple categories:

  1. University of Illinois: https://www.grad.illinois.edu/fellowship/?action=main.search&q=
  2. Florida International University: https://ugrad.fiu.edu/scholarships/Pages/National.aspx 
  3. Kansas State www.k-state.edu/artsci/scholarship 
  4. U. Arkansas http://fellowships.uark.edu/634.php 
  5. Yale University: http://www.yale.edu/yalecollege/academics/fellowships/start/other/index.html
  6. Vanderbilt    http://ohs.vanderbilt.edu/ 
  7. U. Illinois, Chicago http://www.uic.edu/depts/oaa/ssp/award.htm Or:  https://www.grad.illinois.edu/fellowship/ 
  8. Williamette. http://willamette.edu/search/index1.html?cx=011125815161069797886%3Agrzkhoi3q9s&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&qallwu=scholarships 
  9. Notre Dame http://fellows.nd.edu/: 
  10. University of Chicago: http://ccsa.uchicago.edu/ 
  11. Smith College: http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/alternate_sites.php 
  12. North Dakota: http://fellows.nd.edu/ 
  13. Michigan State Univ.: http://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/3subject.htm 
  14. Stanford: https://haas.stanford.edu/students/cardinal-quarter/fellowships 
  15. Northern Arizona State: http://nau.edu/National-International-Scholarships-Fellowships/Other-Major-Scholarships/Postgraduate-Opportunities/ 
  16. Columbia: http://www.college.columbia.edu/students/fellowships/catalog

Note, as well (on my web page https://honors.unt.edu/office-nationally-competitive-scholarships) the link “UNT Scholarships and Financial Aid Resources.”  It will lead you to numerous hard-copy and many more Internet library resources that will prove helpful in searching for scholarships.   

For graduate students applying for a highly specific grant (to fund a special project) rather than for a general scholarship or fellowship: SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network):

You will need your UNT euid/password to access.

For assistance with this site, please contact Ms. Jo Monahan, UNT Reference Librarian: Matthews Hall, room 119B. 940/565-3955. Please enter door by the elevator. (Please call in advance for an appointment.)

Make sure, as well, to check out the following:

Scholarships for Women and minorities:

For Students with Learning Disabilities

For students interested in public policy (Google the following):

  • Truman Scholarship
  • Pickering Undergraduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship
  • Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship
  • Rangel International Affairs Summer Enrichment Program
  • Rangel International Affairs Fellowship Program
  • Payne International Development Fellowship
  • The Autry Fellowship
  • Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs
  • Emerson National Hunger Fellowship
  • Humanity in Action Internship
  • Institute on Philanthropy & Voluntary Service
  • Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship

For students who have excelled in sports and now intend to attend graduate school:

For students with physical disabilities:

For students in Active Recovery from Mental Illness:

ONCE YOU HAVE AN APPLICATION FORM IN HAND (the following applies for all national- and international-scholarship opportunities, with the exception of the Rhodes Scholarship, for which you may receive absolutely no feedback on your application essay):

  • determine the word or “character” limit for each entry;
  • fill out that response in a Word document, adhering to the word or “character” limit;
  • place that response beneath a cut-and-paste of the essay prompt (that is, the instructions for that essay), and run that response by your faculty mentor for thematic and stylistic feedback;
  • incorporate that feedback into your Word document;
  • cut and paste that revised Word document into an email to james.duban@unt.edu.  I will provide additional feedback in the areas of style and tone.
  • When you, your mentor, and I are satisfied with that Word document, you will undertake the same process for each subsequent entry or essay.
  • After completing each entry this way, you will cut and paste those entries into the appropriate boxes or columns of the formal application. I advise you never to work on the Internet site until you have completed the essay(s) in Word.
  • Students should complete the application at least three weeks prior to the deadline and show a copy of the completed application to any person from whom they expect a letter of recommendation.  The completed application will give recommenders more to say about you and will also allow them to place their recommendations in the context of the specific scholarship and its expectations.  Professors will also interpret the three-week buffer as a welcome gesture of courtesy.

I look forward to working with you on these opportunities.

As publicized in my prior Eagle Connect messages, several scholarships require UNT endorsement. To compete for those opportunities, UNT students must complete the application in hard copy and secure hard-copy letters of recommendation before uploading anything online.  Students who bypass the hard-copy submission deadlines (for the seven scholarships below) will forego UNT nomination.  If you plan to compete for any of the following scholarships, you must do so by the specified campus-level deadline (below), and deliver all application materials to me in hard copy (Sage Hall 228). Please arrange an appointment by emailing jduban@unt.edu. Please do not begin working on these applications unless we have met in advance to discuss your eligibility (nearly all require 3.8-4.0 GPA, along with extensive records of research and leadership):

ENDORSEMENT SCHOLARSHIPS AND UNT CAMPUS DEADLINES (REGARDLESS OF NATIONAL DEADLINES):

Please let me know which scholarships you deem appropriate for you. When you send an email to me, kindly place the name of the scholarship at the front of the “subject” line, with the added words, “will apply, need feedback.”  For example, your subject line might read as follows:  “Rotary Scholarship, will apply.”

I look forward to working with you on these opportunities.

James Duban
Associate Dean for Research and National Scholarships\TAMS and the Honors College