The UNT Office for Nationally Competitive Scholarships (formerly the Office of Postgraduate Fellowships) assists undergraduate and graduate students in identifying and pursuing externally funded research and study opportunities. UNT has a proud history of award winners and the Office on Nationally Competitive Scholarships stands ready to help UNT students successfully navigate the preparation and application process for Nationally Competitive Scholarships such as Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, James Madison, Harry S. Truman, Andrew W. Mellon, and National Science Foundation scholarships and fellowships.

 

UNT National Scholarship Award Winners

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Getting Started
This page describes the scholarships that are generally considered the most prestigious. Many of these require institutional support to apply, while some others do not. Please see below for more detailed information on scholarships in both categories.

Many other scholarships are available, and information about those will be provided upon request from this office (940-565-3305).
Institutional Support Required

Please see the tabs below for information on each opportunity.

A note on the Rhodes, Marshall, and Mitchell Scholarships

August 6, Internal Submission Deadline

Please be advised that August 6 is the internal UNT deadline for submitting Rhodes, Marshall, or Mitchell Scholarship applications to the UNT nominating committee. If you plan to apply for any of these opportunities, please contact James.Duban@unt.edu (cc. {{a:409639}}) ASAP. Let us know for which scholarship(s) you will apply.

UNT has a single nominating committee for these three scholarships, each of which allows graduating seniors to study abroad for one-to-two years. August 6 is the receipt deadline for electronic submission of all forms, essays, transcripts, and letters of recommendation. Those should go to James.Duban@unt.edu, with a CC to {{a:409639}}. While these competitions now feature national-level electronic uploads, the UNT Faculty Nominating Committee consults only hard-copy materials that arrive at Sage Hall 320K for purposes of preliminary deliberation. Students should not confuse national-level application and nomination deadlines with the requisite internal UNT deadline of August 6.

If you plan to apply for more than one of the following three scholarships, you must submit a complete paper application, including a formal transcript and all requisite letters of recommendation (tailored to each scholarship), along with completed application essays.

The Rhodes Scholarship

The UNT nominating committee seeks outstanding students to compete for the Rhodes Scholarship, generally deemed the most prestigious of competitive awards for graduating seniors, or for age-eligible alumni who have not yet enrolled in graduate school. Rhodes Scholars attend the University of Oxford to earn their next academic degree—usually the master's, or another bachelor's degree.

The UNT nominating committee advances students whose GPAs range from 3.8 to 4.0 and who, via research outcomes or creative projects, have gone well beyond what is required in the classroom. Applicants should have made, or be in the process of making, original contributions to their fields of study. Evidence of such contribution may reside in refereed (usually co-authored) publication (or forthcoming) manuscripts, or in the research mentor's observations about vital research-in-progress. In the arts and related fields, a student's performance-based activities, as judged by the testimony of professors or other authorities, signify contribution to one's discipline.

Viable candidates must boast significant leadership and humanitarian endeavors—both on- and off-campus.

Candidates should also be able to explain compellingly their need to study with particular faculty at the University of Oxford, and within a particular college at Oxford, to earn a master's degree or another bachelor's degree. Applicants must not have passed their 24th birthday on 1 October in the year in which they are applying, although that stipulation may change (keep your eye on their updated webpage). International students from the following countries are eligible to apply through their home countries: Canada, Australia, China, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Nambia, and Swaziland, India, New Zealand, Germany, Zimbabwe, Bermuda, Commonwealth Caribbean, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Kenya, Pakistan, Zambia. So, please do apply if you are an eligible international student from these countries. You must nonetheless meet UNT's August 6 internal deadline in cases where the international competition requires UNT nomination. Some international deadlines may in fact precede August 6.

N.B.: Applicants for the Rhodes Scholarship may not seek any editorial feedback. UNT will not nominate anybody who violates this provision of the application. You may, however, show your application essays to persons from whom you request a letter of recommendation, but you must alert them to the fact that you are not at liberty to receive any stylistic feedback, even if that feedback were to address something as simple as a typo.

No Institutional Support Required

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.

Please see the tabs below for information on each opportunity.

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.

White silhouette of McConnell Tower

Even freshmen and sophomores should begin thinking about postgraduate prospects. Undergraduate scholarships such as the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the Morris K. Udall Scholarship, and the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships, significantly enhance postgraduate opportunities. The awards are intrinsically worth pursuing and have the added benefit of enhancing a student's prospects for receiving a postgraduate fellowship. Note, as well, that the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, awarded to college juniors, funds a senior year of study and two-to-three years of graduate study.

 

Most postgraduate fellowship deadlines occur from September through November. Serious contenders should begin researching, writing, and organizing their applications in the spring and summer preceding fall deadlines. In some cases, such as with Marshall, Rhodes, and Truman scholarships, UNT faculty screening committees read applications and invite the most promising candidates to on-campus interviews. The screening committees then decide whom to nominate to represent UNT at state and regional levels of competition.

Finalists interact intensively and regularly with these committees to prepare for off-campus interviews.

Applying for a national scholarship is a "no lose" situation, since undergraduates are able to channel their essays into conventional graduate school applications. They thereby enhance their prospects for being accepted into a graduate program and for receiving internal fellowship support. Graduate students, in turn, often end up formulating a dissertation proposal from the writing which they undertake as part of the process of applying for a national scholarship.

 

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