Eligibility
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 year of application. (“Junior” means a student who is currently enrolled, plans to continue full-time undergraduate study, and expects to receive a bachelor’s degree in the following academic year (in either December, May, or August).
- 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 provides 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.
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.
Deadline
Mizzou can nominate only one student per year for the Beinecke Scholarship. As such, there is an application process for receiving the campus nomination. The campus nomination deadline is 11:59 p.m., March 5, 2026. For more information, email fellowships@missouri.edu.
The national Beinecke deadline is 4 p.m. on the last Friday in March.