Beinecke Scholarship

Scholarship Sponsored by Sperry Fund

Nomination 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.

How to Apply

Student 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:

• 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.
• 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.