Chinese Language Majors: List of Excellent Scholarships

Chinese is one of the critical needs languages. This is great news for scholarship seekers. Even if you have no interest in why this very difficult language is categorized as such, you’ll want to hear more about these excellent scholarship opportunities.

Critical need languages are those in which the U.S. government has particular security interests. Chiefly the biggest challenge is getting students involved with studying these cultures and languages so they might be useful to the security efforts.

Big Federal Scholarships for Chinese Language Students

  • The Boren Scholarships and Fellowships are funded by the National Security Education Program. These lucrative cash programs put undergraduate and graduate students into intensive study abroad programs, in this case for Chinese language students. And the volume of U.S. students going to study in China has spiked in recent years. Undergrad scholarships may be as much as $20,000 and grad fellowships, $30,000. Undergrads have no choice but to study onsite and in total immersion programs, while grads may study intensive foreign languages stateside, abroad or both. These are service obligation awards—recipients must agree to work for one year in national security following their graduation.
  • The Critical Language Studies program is a Department of State sponsored program. Qualified students may win full-tuition scholarships for intensive summer abroad studies. The CLS institutes teach students a critical need language, like Chinese, throughout the summer. Interestingly this is not a scholarship for service. The hitch? The goal is to encourage students to maintain language skills for their professional pursuits.

Scholarships from Colleges and Universities

Because China is the hot new country in which to study abroad and the language is challenging, many are the college foreign language departments offering scholarships and study abroad money for students willing to study this language specialty.

  • SUNY’s Levin Institute has struck a deal with the Chinese Ministry of Education that allows multiple students to travel to China for study at the Sichuan and Nanjing Universities. Scholarships cover every thing but travel expenses, including a cash stipend for spending.
  • Ohio State University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures has added a recent Chinese Language Scholarship. The award is open to high school seniors interested in attending OSU and studying Chinese. These are full-tuition scholarships.
  • George Washington University’s Sigur Center sponsors well-known scholarships for Chinese Language Study in Taiwan or China. Eligible applicants may be undergraduate or graduate students. These are very competitive programs.