We list 21 scholarships Open to Nigerian Students in the United States, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 12 of them are fully funded. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
Written from the 21 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 21 scholarships in the United States that are open to Nigerian students. Every one of them sits under two filters: country — United States — and eligibility — open to Nigerian students. That is the whole list, and it is a working list rather than a museum piece. Ten of the 21 are still open at the time of writing. The rest are dated, recurring, or undated, and they come back round.
If you are applying from Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt or anywhere else in the country, the important question is not whether a scholarship sounds prestigious. It is whether your certificate, your test score and your bank balance can carry the application to the finish line. The sections below set out what these awards actually pay for, what they ask you to submit, and how the deadlines fall across the year.
The eligibility picture here is unusually clean. Of the 21 awards, none names Nigeria or a region as a restriction, and all 21 carry no nationality restriction at all. Those two figures describe the same 21 awards from different angles: the list contains no award that shuts Nigerians out by naming a country or region, and every award on it is open on nationality grounds. No award on this page leaves eligibility unstated.
That means your work is not proving you are allowed to apply. It is proving you are the right applicant. The list is spread across study levels, and several awards appear at more than one level:
For a Nigerian reader, the Bachelors group is where WAEC and NECO results matter most, alongside whatever secondary school record the award asks for. The Masters and PhD groups are where a B.Sc, HND or M.Sc comes in, and where a transcript request to your department, plus courier costs, becomes part of your budget before you have spent anything on the application itself.
Funding labels are not uniform. Twelve awards are labelled fully funded and one is labelled partially funded. Eight do not label their funding either way, so treat those as unknown until you read the individual page.
Where awards state benefits in their own text, the pattern is:
Read those as what the awards say in writing, not as a promise that every cost is covered. Tuition and living costs appearing equally often is useful: it tells you that where an award names one, it very often names the other. Health insurance appearing four times is the line item Nigerian students most often forget to check, because a funded place without insurance still leaves a bill.
Duration is stated on only a handful of awards. Three state four years, one states two years, one states four years or longer depending on the major, and one fellowship funds up to a stated first period. For everything else, check the individual page rather than assuming a length.
The awards are not concentrated in one faculty. Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences lead with four awards each. Business and Management, Engineering, and Medicine and Health Sciences follow with three each. Education, Law and Natural Sciences have two each, and Computer Science and IT has one.
That spread matters if you are weighing a course change against your current certificate. A Nigerian graduate in a subject with two or three awards on this list has a narrower set of pages to read than someone in Arts or Social Sciences, but the list is not empty for any of the fields above.
The requirements stated on the awards themselves are the best guide to what your next three months look like:
The English test figure is the one to plan around. Ten awards state it, which means booking a test date early, and budgeting for the fee and for sending the score to each institution. Where an award does not state a test requirement, do not assume a waiver exists — check the award page and the university's own requirement before you decide.
Letters of recommendation are the second bottleneck. Eight awards ask for them, and Nigerian referees are often asked at short notice by several students at once. Approach your referees with your CV, your statement and a clear deadline, and give them weeks rather than days.
The degree class requirement appears on three awards, so most of this list does not state a class threshold in writing. That does not mean your class is irrelevant to a competitive selection; it means the award page does not name a cut-off. The research proposal, asked for by two awards, is the item that takes longest to write well, and the one return-home commitment applies to a single award.
Ten awards carry a date and ten are recurring. Eleven are undated, which usually means the provider runs the award on a cycle without publishing a fixed closing day on the listing. Among the dated ones, the busiest months are October with three deadlines, November with three, and September with one.
The awards closing soonest are:
Further out, Boston University Presidential Scholarship 2027 USA closes 1 December. If you are reading this in the middle of an October or November window, the honest advice is to pick one award you can complete properly rather than three you cannot finish.
The list draws on named universities and foundations, including Stanford University, Harvard University, Clark University, Cornell University and Boston University, alongside a general grouping of USA universities and academic institutions. The ACI Foundation, the Schlumberger Foundation and Harrison Middleton University also appear among the providers.
Nigerian students are a large presence in the United States. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics recorded 16,632 Nigerian students there in 2023, the second-largest group from any country. That figure is context, not a claim about your chances on any single award.
Start with the closing dates above, then work backwards. If an award needs an English test, book it before you write anything else, because the score has to exist before the deadline, not after. Request transcripts from your department early and budget for courier fees, since Nigerian institutions rarely turn them around in a week. Ask your referees now, with the deadline in writing.
Then read the individual award page for the one thing this collection cannot tell you: whether your subject, your class and your level fit what that particular provider is funding this cycle. The list gives you 21 starting points. The application is still yours to build.
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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