Loyola University Chicago

Fellowship Office

Undergraduate students

Here is what you need to know right now about nationally competitive scholarships.

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 to deadlines and start planning.
  2. Review the section here on “Deadlines: what you need to know”.  Remember: many of these are nationally-competitive scholarships, which means that students all over the country are applying.  In order 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 LUC’s fellowship staff, we encourage you to look to the other Loyola students who have won awards you are interested in, Often, these students can be excellent resources when researching a fellowship application.