https://beineckescholarship.org/

Eligibility

Each year approximately 145 colleges and universities are invited to nominate a student for a Beinecke Scholarship, and up to 20 new scholarships will be awarded. Each school invited to participate in the Beinecke Scholarship Program is permitted to make a single nomination each year.

Students enrolled at a participating institution who are interested in applying for a Beinecke Scholarship should contact their campus liaison for information regarding the procedure to be followed in selecting the school’s nominee.

To be eligible for a Beinecke Scholarship, a student must:

• Have a documented history of being eligible to receive need-based financial aid during their undergraduate years, with a slight preference for Pell Grant recipients. Other evidence of meeting this criterion is a student’s history of receiving need-based institutional, state, or federal grants-in-aid. The nominated student will be required to complete and submit a Financial Aid Data Sheet outlining how the student meets this criterion. During the selection process, the amount of financial need will be one of the factors considered, with preference given to candidates for whom the awarding of a Beinecke Scholarship would significantly increase the likelihood of the student’s being able to attend graduate school.
• Demonstrate superior standards of intellectual ability, scholastic achievement, and personal promise during their undergraduate career.
• Be a college junior pursuing a bachelor’s degree during the 2024-2025 academic year. “Junior” means a student who is currently enrolled, plans to continue full-time undergraduate study, and expects to receive a bachelor’s degree between December 2025 and August 2026.
• Plan to enter a research- or creative-focused master’s or doctoral program in the arts, humanities, or social sciences. NOTE: Students in the social sciences who plan to pursue graduate study in neuroscience or clinical psychology should not apply for a Beinecke Scholarship.
• Be a U.S. citizen or U.S. national from American Samoa or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Award

The Beinecke Scholarship Program

The Beinecke Scholarship Program was established in 1971 by the Board of Directors of The Sperry and Hutchinson Company to honor Edwin, Frederick, and Walter Beinecke. The Board created an endowment to provide substantial scholarships for the graduate education of young men and women of exceptional promise. The program seeks to encourage and enable highly motivated students to pursue opportunities available to them and to be courageous in the selection of a graduate course of study in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Since 1975 the program has selected 739 college juniors from 122 different undergraduate institutions for support during graduate study at any accredited university.

Each scholar receives $5,000 immediately prior to entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while attending graduate school. There are no geographic restrictions on the use of the scholarship, and recipients are allowed to supplement the award with other scholarships, assistantships and research grants. Scholars are encouraged to begin graduate study immediately following graduation and must utilize all funding within six years of completing their undergraduate studies, and within five years of beginning graduate studies.

The Beinecke African Scholarship Program

The Beinecke African Scholarship Program was established in 1996 in cooperation with the Wildlife Conservation Society. The program was established to enable African students to pursue graduate study in conservation or wildlife ecology at a University in the United States.

A single scholarship was awarded from 1998 to 2002 at which time the number of awards was increased to two per year and enrollment in Universities outside of the United States was permitted. One of these two annual awards is funded by The Sperry Fund while the other is funded by an endowment established in support of the program at the Wildlife Conservation Society. To date, a total of 43 Beinecke African Scholarships have been awarded. Of these, 24 have been directly funded by The Sperry Fund, one by The Prospect Hill Foundation and 18 by the endowment at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Deadline

Campus liaisons must scan nomination materials into a single PDF and email them to the Program Director no later than by 5pm EST on the last Friday in March. Nominated students must also email a copy of the Financial Aid Data Sheet to the Beinecke Scholarship Program Director by no more than 72 hours after the application deadline.

Students should please note that their participating institution will have internal deadlines linked to their nominating process that will fall earlier than March. Please contact your campus liaison for more information.

Students should not submit any application materials to the Beinecke Scholarship Program Director unless you are your school’s official nominee, as noted above.