Advice for Applying

Every nationally competitive scholarship is different. To best explore which scholarships are right for you, reflect on your academic and career plans first. Depending on what you want to do – study abroad, go into research, become a doctor – then you can begin looking at scholarships that best fit those academic and career plans. 

1. Pay special attention to eligibility. You might not be able to apply for a certain scholarship until you are a sophomore, or senior. Once you know when you can apply, then you can look at deadlines below and start planning.
2. Remember: many of these are nationally competitive scholarships, which means that students all over the country are applying. For scholarship agencies to have enough time to review applications and decide on winners, deadlines are often a year before the scholarship's start date.
3. Use as many of the Fellowship Office's resources as you can: come to an info session, review info session presentations, then make an appointment once you have an idea of what you'd like to apply for. You should also use the resources provided by scholarships' websites – all of them contain valuable information on how to write competitively, provide webinars on different topics, and even provide contact information if you want to ask a question directly.

Many fellowship applications can be long and complicated. The Fellowship is here to support you during the application process. In addition to reaching out to our staff, we encourage you to look to the other Loyola students who have won awards in which you are interested. Often, these students can be excellent resources when researching a fellowship application. 

Some of the graduate-level awards we commonly work with are as follows:

• Fulbright US Student Program
• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
• Boren Fellowships, for research abroad outside of Western Europe
• Ford Foundation predoctoral grants for underrepresented students
• Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) program

There are also funding search engines you can use, as follows:

• PIVOT: the Community of Sciences search wizard
• Fellowship Finder, provided by the University of Illinois
• UCLA GRAPES database

What to Know

Many major fellowships, such as the US Fulbright Program and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, have deadlines in the fall, anywhere from late September to early December.  These applications are quite complicated, requiring two or three different essays, and in the case of the Fulbright award, a letter from an overseas affiliation. It’s in your best interest to begin outlining your plans before the end of the spring semester. 

For many, nationally competitive, fellowships, universities set a campus deadline before the program application deadline. In most cases, the campus deadline is one month before the program deadline. 

While preparing a submission, you can come to an information session, research the award’s website to find guidance on what to write and start an online application. Even if you decide not to apply for an award, it is always a good idea to start an online application, to gain familiarity with that program’s application process. There is no penalty for not submitting an online application. 

Over the summer, you can revisit the award requirements and outline your plans, so it can evolve into a full proposal. The Fellowship Office can help you with this: you can always contact us and send us your essays via e-mail. We can work with you on all aspects of an application, especially in organizing and polishing essays. Fellowship Office staff are available to assist you throughout the year, including over the summer. 

By taking these steps, you can prepare yourself for fall deadlines, such that you can better manage both your application responsibilities and your fall classwork. 

Please contact us for any questions you may have about deadlines, application preparation, and guidance on what you need to do to develop the strongest proposal possible.

Campus Deadlines