Nationally competitive scholarships can help fund your education and bring added distinction to you, your résumé and UNT. Thanks to the internet, many of these opportunities are just a keyword search away — but finding them is just the beginning.
UNT’s Nationally Competitive Scholarships office stands ready to help you submit the most polished and competitive application possible by offering feedback on style, tone and organization on any essay. With guidance from our team and your faculty mentor, you can enhance your writing skills and clarify your future plans and commitments, and the benefits go far beyond scholarship applications. Undergraduates often can adapt national scholarship narratives to graduate school admissions essays, improving their chances of garnering internal fellowship support. Graduate students often end up transforming their scholarship proposals into introductions to their master’s theses or doctoral dissertations. Applying for a nationally competitive scholarship is truly a “no lose” scenario, considering the writing, editing and collaboration skills you’ll develop through the process.
Please review the opportunities listed on this page and follow the protocol below, starting months prior to the application deadline if possible.
Submission Review Process:
- Determine the word or character limit for each prompt.
- Compose your response to each prompt in a Word document, adhering to the word or character limit.
- Place your response beneath a cut-and-paste of the essay prompt and/or instructions then run that response by your faculty mentor for thematic and stylistic feedback.
- Incorporate their feedback into your response.
- Copy and paste the prompt and your revised response 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 your response, you will undertake the same process for each subsequent prompt or essay.
- After completing each entry this way, you will copy and paste them into the appropriate boxes or columns of the formal application. I advise you never to work in the website until you have finalized your 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 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.
In addition to supporting students throughout the application process, the Nationally Competitive Scholarships office works in collaboration with different university divisions to prepare students to apply for fellowships and other awards. Be sure to monitor your email for information about upcoming fellowship orientation sessions co-sponsored by the Toulouse Graduate School, the Division of Research and Innovation and the Nationally Competitive Scholarships office.
If you plan to apply for any of the following fellowships or scholarships, please email me at James.Duban@unt.edu so that I can provide one-on-one guidance as you pursue these exciting opportunities.
Please Note: External deadlines are subject to change and are the student’s personal responsibility. Almost all external scholarships fund the academic year following that in which the student undertakes submission. Winning a national or international fellowship or scholarship does not necessarily have a bearing on UNT tuition rates for out-of-state or international students.
Nationally Competitive Scholarships and Fellowships
Frank Huntington Beebe Fund for Musicians Wishing to Study Abroad
The Frank Huntington Beebe Fund for Musicians provides fellowships for gifted young musicians, generally performers and composers in classical disciplines, who wish to pursue advanced music study and performance abroad. The fund provides financial support for round trip transportation, living and other expenses through an all-inclusive grant of $22,000.
The fellowship is tenable at any number of European universities and at all the British Royal Colleges of Music. Fellowships are generally awarded to musicians based in the United States (although not necessarily U.S. citizens) at the outset of their professional lives, for whom this would be the first extended period of study abroad. A strong, well-planned project of study that will enhance the applicant's life in music must be proposed. Enrollment in a school or university is not required unless such study is an essential part of the project.
UNT applicants are typically graduating seniors from the College of Music or graduate students needing to round out their advanced studies abroad.
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
This is a $130,000+ scholarship for U.S. citizens that extends collectively for up to five years to help cover the expenses of either a master’s or Ph.D. program in life sciences, geosciences, computer and information science and engineering, social science or STEM education. Viable applicants should be able to account for contributive past research and contributions to their labs. Graduating seniors and early-phase graduate students may apply.
Department of Defense Science, Mathematics & Research for Transformation (SMART) Program
Open to both undergraduates and graduate students, this program offers generous funding and internship possibilities to students in STEM fields of study critical to national security. Prospects for summer internships exist as a prelude to the student’s working for DoD, on a year-for-year basis on fellowship support and employment in a civilian capacity. The location at which a scholar completes all internships and the service commitment, known as the sponsoring facility (SF), is a laboratory, agency or organization within the DoD component that participates in the SMART Program.
Department of Defense, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG)
This fellowship aims to promote science and engineering education by supporting promising U.S. scientists who are pursuing doctoral degrees in designated research disciplines. The award covers tuition and fees for any graduating senior or graduate student who has at least three years in a graduate program, as of September of the new academic year. The student must pursue research in accord with one or more specific topics identified in the Department of Defense's Broad Agency Announcements (BAAs).
Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (CSGF)
With a $38,000 yearly stipend and full payment of tuition and fees, this graduate fellowship provides outstanding benefits and opportunities to students pursuing doctoral degrees in fields that use high-performance computing to solve complex science and engineering problems. Applicants must be full-time graduate students working toward a Ph.D. and willing to participate in a practicum at one of 21 DOE laboratories throughout the country.
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Internships/Research at the EPA
The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) and Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) administer internships and research project training opportunities funded by EPA offices and laboratories and by other government and private sector organizations. These opportunities are available year-round to science and engineering undergrads, graduate students, recent graduates and post-docs interested in pursuing project-specific EPA research and developmental activities.
NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program (GSRP)
Over two dozen internships, fellowships and scholarships are available for both undergraduates and graduate students in a vast array of STEM disciplines related to NASA space exploration.
Korea Foundation Field Research Fellowship
The Korea Foundation offers fellowships for graduate students completing a dissertation on any field of study related to Korea.
Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program
Through $27,500 fellowships, this program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education.
Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art
Since 1992, Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art support graduate students in any stage of Ph.D. dissertation research or writing for scholarship on a topic in the history of the visual arts of the United States, including all facets of Native American art.
Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans
The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program supports the graduate education of 30 New Americans — immigrants and children of immigrants — who are poised to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture or their academic field. Each fellow receives up to $90,000 in financial support over two years.
SSRC Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF)
The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship offers six to twelve months of support to graduate students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who are enrolled in Ph.D. programs in the United States and conducting dissertation research about U.S. Indigenous or non-U.S. cultures and societies. The IDRF program especially welcomes applications from underrepresented institutions. Fellowship amounts vary depending on the research plan, with a per-fellowship average of $23,000. The fellowship includes participation in an SSRC-funded interdisciplinary workshop upon the completion of IDRF-funded research.
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowships
AAUW offers an array of graduate-level fellowships to support women who are either U.S. citizens or international students. Opportunities include American Fellowships, International Fellowships, Medicine and Science Research Publication Grants in Engineering, and Selected Professions Fellowships.
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships
The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.
Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
Through its program of fellowships, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximize the educational benefits of diversity and increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.
Applicants must be committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level in the U.S.
The Chateaubriand Fellowship is a grant offered by the Embassy of France in the United States that supports outstanding Ph.D. students from U.S. institutions who wish to conduct part of their doctoral research in France for a period ranging from four to nine months. Chateaubriand fellows are selected through a merit-based competition with expert evaluation in France and in the United States.
The Fellowship is divided into two subprograms:
The Chateaubriand Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics & Biology-Health (STEM) for doctoral students aims to initiate or reinforce collaborations, partnerships or joint projects between French and American research teams. This fellowship is offered by the Office for Science & Technology (OST) of the Embassy of France in partnership with American universities and French research organizations such as Inserm and Inria. It is a partner of the National Science Foundation’s GROW program.
The Chateaubriand Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) is offered by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. The HSS program targets outstanding Ph.D. students enrolled in U.S. institutions who seek to engage in research in France in any discipline of the humanities and social sciences. The HSS Chateaubriand program is supported by Campus France which provides assistance to fellows on site.
Smithsonian Fellowships and Internships
These opportunities support a spectrum of study and engagement across the disciplines in thousands of collections at the Smithsonian Institution. Students should apply if they genuinely need an SI resource to complete a major product.
U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships
The U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships provides funding for seven-to-ten-weeks of overseas instruction, next summer, to advance your knowledge of the following languages, each of which is germane to U.S. national security. Eligible CLC language study exists for: Azerbaijani, Bangla, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Punjabi, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu, Arabic and Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. Countries in which you might study include Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Russia, South Korea, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, or others where the above languages are spoken.