Social Sciences Lowdown: Sources for Scholarship Funds
What are the Social Sciences? Students embarking on studies in Political Science, Economics, Sociology, and more are pursuing interdisciplinary collections of “sciences” that explore the interaction between humans and various aspects of their environment, especially within a community or society.
Scholarships for these large fields of study are abundant. Our need and desire to understand, anticipate, and “read” human society grows more urgent the more porous our national borders grow.
Popular Sources for Social Science Scholarships
Government sources are great for some types of social sciences scholarships. Take culture and language studies, or Sociology of a people. Outside our knowledge of European cultures, which is fairly similar to our own, National Security agencies have a stake in collecting in-depth knowledge about more foreign cultures and languages. What better way to net that know-how than to incentivize massive front lines of undergraduate and graduate students already motivated to pursue sociology, political science, and culture studies? Dangle large dollar signs before them and send them off to study in the Middle East or Africa or Asia.
Of particular interest to the U.S. National Security Agency is the hot field of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Students at every level of education have access to scholarship riches in this particular major. The Boren Scholarships and Fellowships are massive and ultra-competitive programs that put eager students to work, on-site in the Middle East, deciphering the nuances of an often misunderstood culture and a “critical need” language.
But there are scholarships for “less” in-demand cultural studies, as well, such as the perennially popular study of Spanish language and culture.
The federally-funded scholarships are some of the more outstanding for students in the sociology and political science arena.
Behavioral Studies
Behavioral studies include everything from Bachelors level Counseling to Doctoral Psychology. Scholarships are most abundant directly through colleges and universities. There you have immediate access to monetary awards designed for your specific field of study, be it counseling, psychology, social work, and even human services.
Professional associations, such as the American Psychological Association and the American School Counselor Association—with state chapters included—all have scholarship and fellowship money to dole out. You’ll find scholarships for undergraduates, students looking to specialize in school counseling, rehab/addiction counseling, vocational counseling, and for graduate and post-grads with dissertation research to fund, and much more.
Economics Scholarships
Economics, the study of value-based resources and our human relation to them. This field of study never fails to yield scholarship funds and from a wide berth of sources, from government to private business and industry. Students pursue this field often through the Masters and Doctoral degrees completing compelling dissertations designed to land them positions in academia or in research or high-level business. Many of the best scholarships come from university-related think-tanks and high-level academia.
Minority Scholarships for Social Science Students
The Social Sciences continue to require beefing up in the diversity department. To those ends you’ll find expanded free money opportunities for ethnic minorities and even women in some cases. Most college and university scholarship funds have at least one scholarship tailored to minority students in the department. The United Negro College Fund and the Hispanic College Fund maintain quite lengthy lists of scholarships, some of which are a fit for social science majors.