We list 5 arts & Humanities Scholarships for Nigerian Students in the United States, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 3 of them are fully funded. 4 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so arts & humanities applicants can apply too.
Written from the 5 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 5 scholarships in the United States for students working in Arts & Humanities. Every award on the list is tagged to the United States, and every one is tagged to Arts & Humanities, so you are not scrolling through a general international funding page hoping an arts award appears somewhere near the bottom.
The list is small. That is worth saying plainly, because a short list changes how you should use it. With five awards, you can read each one properly rather than skimming ten and applying to none. Three of the five are labelled Fully Funded. Two do not state their funding either way, and this page says nothing about what those two cover.
The providers are Stanford University, Boston University, Berea College, the Clark Art Institute and Harrison Middleton University — one award each.
Four of the five awards are open to Nigerian applicants. None of those four names Nigeria or the West African region in its eligibility text; they are open because they carry no nationality restriction at all. That distinction matters when you read the award pages yourself. An award that is silent on nationality is not the same as an award that names your country, and you should confirm the position on the provider's own page before you spend money on a courier.
For the fifth award, eligibility is not stated on the award listing. Treat that as unknown rather than as a yes or a no, and check it directly.
Levels are spread rather than clustered. Two awards are at Bachelors level, two are Fellowships, and there is one each at Masters, PhD, Postdoctoral and Short Course level. If you are finishing a B.Sc or HND and looking at a taught Masters, exactly one award on this page sits at that level. If you are further along — post-M.Sc, already publishing, or holding a lecturing post — the fellowship and postdoctoral entries are the ones to open first.
Of the five awards, the funding labels break down as three Fully Funded and two where funding is not stated. Among the benefits that awards name in their own text, tuition appears in two and living costs appear in two. Travel is named by one award, and research or training costs by one.
Read those counts as what the awards say in writing, not as a promise. An award that names tuition is telling you it covers tuition; it is not telling you it covers your flight, your visa fee, your transcript courier or your first month's rent before the stipend lands. Where an award does not name a benefit, assume you are paying for it until the provider tells you otherwise.
Durations vary widely across the five. One award runs up to the first term of a longer programme, one runs four years, one runs four years or longer depending on the major, and one runs between one and ten months. The spread tells you these are genuinely different opportunities — a four-year undergraduate place and a ten-month fellowship are not interchangeable, and you should not apply to both with the same statement.
Two requirements are stated often enough to plan around. Three of the five awards ask for an English test score — IELTS or TOEFL. Two ask for letters of recommendation.
Three out of five is the number that should shape your calendar. If you have not sat IELTS or TOEFL, that is the first thing to fix, and it is the thing Nigerian applicants most often leave too late. Test slots fill, results take time to reach you, and sending an additional score report to a university costs money on top of the test fee. Book before you shortlist, not after.
For the two awards asking for recommendation letters, approach your referees early and give them the award name, the deadline and a one-page summary of what you are applying for. A referee writing from memory two days before a deadline produces a letter that reads like it. Where an award waives the English test — for example because your degree was taught in English — that will be stated on the award itself, so check rather than assume.
Four of the five awards carry a date. All four of those are still open, and all four recur, which means a missed cycle is not the end of the road. One award on the page is undated.
The busiest months are October, with two deadlines, then November and December with one each. That is a tight window, and it lands in the same period as transcript requests, WES or credential evaluations, and international courier backlogs. Start the paperwork in September if you are aiming at an October deadline.
The four dated awards closing soonest are:
The fifth award on the page, Berea College Scholarships 2027 for International Students | USA, carries several dates rather than one, so check which round applies to you.
Arts & Humanities is the largest single field grouping on this page, with all five awards tagged to it. But the awards are not exclusive to the humanities. Three are also tagged to Business & Management and three to Medicine & Health Sciences. Two each touch Education, Engineering and Social Sciences. One each touches Computer Science & IT, Law and Natural Sciences.
That overlap is useful if your work sits between disciplines. A historian working on health policy, a literature graduate moving into education, or a philosopher writing about technology may find an award here that a purely humanities search would miss. Read the tags on each award rather than assuming the label on this page excludes you.
The United States hosts the second-largest population of Nigerian students in the world, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics: 16,632 Nigerian students were studying there in 2023. That figure covers all fields, not Arts & Humanities alone, but it tells you the infrastructure exists — Nigerian student associations, churches and mosques, African groceries, and departments that have seen Nigerian applicants before.
For humanities applicants specifically, that matters in a practical way. You are not explaining your educational background from scratch to an admissions office that has never encountered a Nigerian transcript. You are joining a cohort where your qualifications are already legible.
Five awards is a manageable list. Work through it in this order.
The list is short, so the work is in the detail of each application rather than in the volume of them. Read all five properly before you decide which two or three deserve your time.
Studying in the United States is a dream for many international students due to its world-class universities, cutting-edge research opportunities, and global recognition. However, the high cost of tuition, living expenses, and travel can be a significant hurdle. Fortunately, a wide range of fully funded and partially funded scholarships are available specifically for international students, offered by US universities, government initiatives, and private organizations. These programs can cover tuition fees, living stipends, health insurance, and even airfare, depending on the scholarship type. Below is a comprehensive list of the top 10 scholarships in the USA for international students for 2026–2027, including opportunities for undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs. By applying to these scholarships, you can access world-class education while minimizing financial burdens and focusing on academic and professional growth.
*UNESCO Institute for Statistics, inbound internationally mobile students from Nigeria, 2023.
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