Visual Summary / DVFZ Books
Read the list across, not down
A hundred scholarships in one directory. What matters is not the hundred names, it is the pattern they make together.
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01 What the list is
The eight chapters are eight gates, not eight subjects
The contents page lists 101 named entries under eight chapter headings. One of them, Out to Innovate Scholarships, is an umbrella over three awards beneath it, which is how 101 headings become the hundred the title promises.
Read the chapter names in order and you can see what the book is actually sorted by. Chapters 1 and 2 sort by what you study: 28 awards open to multiple fields, and 4 for MBA students. Chapters 3 to 8 sort by who you are: women, foreign nationals, applicants with unique requirements, families of military veterans and service staff, Hispanic students and minority groups, and the LGBTQ community. That is 68 of the hundred.
So the first question is not what you want to study. It is which of these six descriptions fits you, because two thirds of the money in this book is reserved before anyone reads your essay.
A lot of these scholarships are wanting to rectify past wrongs, and many scholarships cater specifically to those who come from previously underrepresented groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community, women, and foreign nationals.Conclusion
02 Where the money comes from
Four of the hundred come from an Ivy. The rest you bring with you
The title says Ivy League, so it is worth being exact about how much of this money the eight universities actually control. Four entries are run by a school itself: the Yale University Scholarship, Cornell’s financial aid for international students, Columbia’s Scholarship for Displaced Students, and the Mitchell Center Graduate Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
Twelve entries name an Ivy anywhere in their text. The other eighty eight are national awards from foundations, companies, alumni groups and government programmes, and they follow you to whichever accredited school admits you. The Fulbright is valid at several universities. QuestBridge lets you rank ten to twelve member institutions. Foot Locker, Dell, Microsoft and Coca-Cola name no university at all.
There is an order to this that catches people out. Twenty eight of the hundred require you to be already enrolled, admitted or accepted before you can apply. The Boustany MBA Scholarship, worth $102,200, asks for an acceptance letter from Harvard Business School before it will look at you. The scholarship follows the admission letter. It does not produce one.
Write your target school at the top of a page and your admission deadline under it. Every award that needs that letter belongs below the line, and nothing below the line can be started first.
03 Need against merit
Inside the school the test is income. Outside it, merit is mostly a floor
The school-run awards in this book are need-based and they say so plainly. The Yale University Scholarship “covers 100% of the financial need within a family” and can range from a few hundred dollars to $70,000 a year. Cornell’s aid for international students is need-based and asks for a completed CSS Profile. QuestBridge gives a full ride to students in a household of four earning less than $65,000 a year.
Yale then defines need with a list that is startlingly concrete: eligibility for a free or reduced-price lunch programme, federally subsidised housing, homelessness or foster care, public assistance, being a ward of the state or an orphan, or holding an ACT or SAT testing fee waiver. This is not a sliding scale. It is a set of facts about your household.
Step outside the university and the test changes. The Army ROTC scholarship notes that “candidates will enjoy preference based on academic performance and not financial need.” And where grades are tested at all, they are usually a floor rather than a contest: 30 of the entries name a numeric GPA minimum, half of those name 3.0, and the other 71 name none.
This is a fully funded scholarship that covers 100% of the financial need within a family.Yale University Scholarship
04 The author’s own sort
The list was built on two things: how big the award is and how hard it is to get
The introduction states the selection rule outright, and it is the most useful sentence in the book: the hundred were chosen “based on the size of the award and how much (or little) effort it would require to apply.” Plot the entries on those two axes and a corner appears.
In that corner: the Be Bold No Essay Scholarship pays $25,000 and asks only that you build a profile on bold.org, with no required field of study, no school preference and no minimum GPA. The Hustle Tech & Business News No-Essay Scholarship pays $10,000 “with little to no effort at all.” The Student Loan Hero award is $1,000 for an essay of 500 words or less.
At the other end the work is real. The Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway makes individual awards of $1,000 to $20,000 and requires a TikTok video, and its top ten compete in a head-to-head football throwing contest. The Orbis MBA Fellowship wants an original stock analysis delivered within a week of your submission, then an interview. Both are worth doing. Neither should be the first thing you do.
Pick the two entries that cost you least to enter and file them this week, before you touch anything that needs an essay. Applications you never send are worth nothing, whatever the headline figure says.
05 The fine print
Some of the largest awards are contracts, not gifts
A handful of the richest entries in the book buy something in return, and the price is paid after you graduate rather than before. Read these entries twice.
The SMART Scholarship Program covers full tuition and pays an annual stipend of $25,000 to $38,000, plus health insurance, mentoring and a summer internship. In exchange every applicant must pass security clearance, take part in Department of Defense internships and work for the Department of Defense after graduation. The Army ROTC scholarship covers 100% of tuition with a $420 monthly stipend and a $1,200 annual stipend, and applicants must agree to accept a commission and serve on active duty, in the Army Reserve or in the National Guard.
The Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship picks 45 people a year for up to $42,000 a year over two years plus an academic stipend of about $18,000, with the Foreign Service waiting at the end. The Schlumberger Faculty for the Future fellowship pays up to $50,000 a year for a PhD and requires a commitment to return to your country of origin. None of that is hidden. It just sits after the number.
For any award over about $20,000, find the sentence that starts with “applicants must agree” or “applicants must commit” before you find the sentence with the money in it. If there is no such sentence, that is useful to know too.
06 The calendar
The year is lopsided, and the heavy end is the spring
Almost every entry ends with a section called “When Do You Apply?”. Count the months those sections name and the year stops looking flat. March is named by 20 entries, January by 14, April by 12. February, the month between two of the three busiest, is named by only 4.
Forty four of the entries name at least one month between January and April. That is where the crush is, and it is also the period when you are likely to be sitting exams. The awards that do not name a month are their own warning: 8 give a season instead, like the Point Foundation LGBTQ Scholarship, which opens “annually in the fall,” and 4 give no deadline section at all.
A few run on a different clock. The Hustle award has a roll-over monthly deadline and announces its winner on July 1, so it can be entered in any month. Army ROTC opens in June and closes on March 1, a nine month window. Both of the Bold.org awards here give preference to applicants who apply early, which turns a long window into a reason to go first rather than a reason to wait.
Put the eight to twelve awards you actually qualify for on one calendar page, then look at the gap between October and December. Everything you can finish there is one thing less to write in March.
07 Before you use any of it
Every figure in this book has an expiry date, and the author says so
This is the 2023-2024 edition, published under a 2022 copyright. Five entries carry a fully dated deadline, and all five dates have now passed: Yale on 15 December 2022, the Pride Foundation opening on 11 October 2022, the Ethel Hayes scholarship on 14 June 2022, PEO on 15 March 2023 and the Global International Support Scholarship on 1 June 2023.
Two entries admit it in the text. The HAAA Scholarship says applications were still ongoing at the time of publication and tells you to ask the university whether the deadline has moved. The National Science Foundation fellowship says every major has a different due date and sends you to the website. Amounts move too: award values, income thresholds and the number of places offered are all reset each cycle.
So treat every entry here as a lead, not a fact. The book cites 91 sources and every one of them carries a URL. Use the entry to find the programme, then let the programme tell you this year’s number.
Once you’ve identified the options that match your unique circumstances, career goals, or academic pursuits, check their sites regularly to remain updated and make sure you never miss a deadline.Introduction
08 The whole list in three lines
A directory is only useful once you know how it sorts
A hundred names is not a plan. Three questions are: who does this money belong to, what does it test, and when does it close.
Mostly not the Ivies
Four of the hundred are run by a university. The other ninety six are national money that travels to whichever school admits you, and twenty eight of them need that admission letter first.
Household, then identity
Inside the school the test is family income. Outside it, sixty eight of the hundred are reserved for people who fit a named group or circumstance, and a 3.0 GPA is usually a floor rather than a contest.
Spring is the crush
Forty four entries name a month between January and April, twenty of them March. The quiet autumn months are where you build the head start, and the low-effort awards are what you put there.
Find the two or three entries that describe you, then go and check them at the source. That is the whole method, and it works in any edition year.
Adapted from 100 Best Ivy League Scholarship Opportunities 2023-2024
Gian Pittard · © 2022 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 91 cited sources in the source edition
Award amounts and deadlines shown are those printed in the 2023-2024 edition and must be checked at the source