Iranian Scholarships
Smack Dab in the Persian Gulf
Iran is one of the Middle East’s heavy hitters in the socio-political arena, sitting pretty as it does in the Persian-Gulf region. For this reason many colleges and universities are steering clear of international study programs: they are ultra-high risk areas, or higher than others. However, Iran, soil of the ancient Persian Empire, is a valuable site for history and archaeology students as well as a site of importance for the U.S. federal government.
Critical Culture and Language: Federal Programs Grow
Everyone wants to be one of the celebrated and widely publicized David L. Boren Scholarships. You know who they are; college press releases everywhere celebrate their Boren heroes. Hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students are rewarded with up to $26,000 each year for their pursuit of programs in critical needs areas like Kuwait. Boren Scholars though must be willing to repay the generous winnings with service to the Department of Defense after graduation.
Disadvantaged undergraduates go fiercely after the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships. Over 700 generous scholarships are awarded to students all over the U.S. each year. The purpose? Diversify the pool of global leaders; an area in which the U.S. has been sorely lagging behind. Eligible applicants must be Pell Grant recipients and among the best of their peers scholastically. The more challenging and non-traditional the program, like that in Kuwait, the more advantage the applicant has. Maximum awards are $5,000.
Critical Language Scholarships are the newest addition to the corps of federal scholarship programs, which may be the appropriate response to the virally popular Boren and Gilman scholarships. Students who want to study advanced Arabic and whose academic records are heads and shoulders above their peers may earn the Critical Language Scholarships that fund language studies in Iran. The CLS program goals are to create new populations of American professionals in all disciplines who are highly educated in a critical language. Applicants must prove an educational or career-oriented need for the language.
Private Funds
Graduate students specializing Eastern European or Middle Eastern politics may apply for Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Fellowships through IREX. Most of the fellowships are designed for students pursuing research projects in Eastern European locations, but there is a special allowance for those engaged in a combination of an Eastern European country and Iran.
