Fellowships & Grants

Each year, a number of Whittier College students compete in the annual Rhodes, Jack Kent Cooke, and Marshall Scholars programs, as well as the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. A campus nominating committee, headed by Joe Dmowski, oversee the selection and submission of Whittier candidate proposals for the Rhodes, Cooke, and Marshall competitions; the Pickering program is administered through the U.S. Department of State and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

Additionally, in 2007, Whittier College established its own endowed fellowhip program, the Richard M. Nixon Fellowship, open exculsively to Whittier students for pursuit of an internship, scholarship opportunity, or research project that echoes Nixon's successful legacy in domestic and foreign policy.

An online collection of other national fellowship and grant opportunities can be found within the Office of Career Services website; please click here to visit these pages.

ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMS

  • The Rhodes Scholarships were created by the will of Cecil J. Rhodes, a British colonial pioneer and statesman. Open to graduating seniors, these scholarships provide for two years of study at the University of Oxford, with the possibility of renewal for a third year. The Rhodes Trustees pay the Scholar all educational costs, maintenance, and travel expenses.

    Cecil Rhodes wished to advance international understanding and peace by bringing together talented young men and women in an environment highly congenial to personal and intellectual development.

    Rhodes specified that the persons chosen as Scholars should have demonstrated literary and scholastic attainments; truthfulness, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindness, unselfishness, and fellowship, exhibition of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in one's contemporaries; and physical vigor, as shown by fondness for and success in sports.

    Committees of Selection meet in each American state in early December. District Committees meet three days later to decide which of the candidates nominated at the state level will receive scholarships. A candidate must be a citizen of the United States, at least 18 years of age, and no more than 24 years of age. He or she must be a college senior, sure to graduate by October of the year of matriculation at Oxford.

  • Marshall Scholarships finance young Americans of high ability to study for a degree in the United Kingdom. At least 40 Scholars are selected each year to study either at graduate or occasionally undergraduate level at an UK institution in any field of study. Each scholarship is held for two years.

    As future leaders, with a lasting understanding of British society, Marshall Scholars strengthen the enduring relationship between the British and American peoples, their governments and their institutions. Marshall Scholars are talented, independent and wide-ranging, and their time as Scholars enhances their intellectual and personal growth. Their direct engagement with Britain through its best academic programmes contributes to their ultimate personal success.

    Open only to United States citizens who (at the time they take up their Scholarship) hold a first degree from an accredited four-year college or university in the United States with a minimum GPA of 3.7. Applications for Marshall Scholarships must be submitted to and endorsed by an accredited US University.

  • The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarship Program will award approximately 40 scholarships to seniors and recent graduates planning to attend graduate school for the first time starting in fall 2008.

    Each award covers a portion of educational expenses, including tuition, living expenses, required fees, and books for the graduate degree chosen. The amount and duration of awards vary by student based on the cost of attendance and the length of the graduate program as well as other scholarships or grants received. The maximum available per student per year of study is $50,000 and the maximum length is six years.