We list 5 social Sciences 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. 4 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 social sciences applicants can apply too.
Written from the 5 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 5 scholarships in the Social Sciences, all tenable in the United States. Every one of the five is listed for the United States, and every one is tagged to the Social Sciences, so you are not scrolling through a general American funding page hoping something fits. The set is small and specific, which is useful: you can read all five entries properly instead of skimming twenty.
The providers named on the page are Stanford University, Harvard University, Boston University, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. Four of the five are labelled fully funded. One does not state its funding position either way, and this page will not guess on its behalf.
The list is weighted towards doctoral study. Three of the five are listed at PhD level. The remaining entries sit at Bachelors, Fellowship, Masters, Postdoctoral and High School level, one each. Because a single award can be open at more than one level, these groups overlap — the counts describe how the awards are tagged, not five separate pots of money.
If you are finishing an M.Sc in Nigeria and looking for a funded PhD in the United States, the doctoral entries are where your file belongs. If you are applying from secondary school, the picture is thinner: one entry is tagged at High School level, and one at Bachelors level.
These figures come from the wording of the awards themselves. They are what each award states in writing, not a promise about your particular offer letter.
Read that list carefully before you build a budget. Living costs appear more often than tuition, which matters if you are comparing an award that pays a stipend against one that pays fees. Travel being named by three awards is worth noting for a Nigerian applicant: a return flight, a visa fee and a SEVIS fee are real costs, and an award that names travel is doing more for you than one that does not mention it. Where an award names research or training costs, that usually speaks to fieldwork, conference attendance or bench time rather than your rent.
Four of the five awards are open to Nigerian applicants. Of those four, none names Nigeria or the West African region as a condition — all four simply carry no nationality restriction. The fifth award does not state its eligibility on the page at all, so treat it as unresolved and check the award's own page before you spend money on a courier.
That is the honest position: four are open, one is unclear. Nothing here is closed to you on nationality grounds. What will decide your application is your academic record, your documents and your timing, not your passport.
The requirements below are counted from what the awards state. They are the load-bearing parts of your file.
Four awards asking for recommendation letters means four awards where the quality of your referees decides a large part of your case. Start early. A Nigerian professor writing for you in October is writing for several students at once, and a generic letter reads like one. Give each referee your transcript, your statement, the exact award name and the deadline, and give them at least three weeks.
Three awards naming IELTS or TOEFL means you should book a test date rather than wait to see whether you need one. Check each award's own page for whether it grants a waiver — some American departments waive the English test where your degree was taught in English, but that is a departmental decision and this page cannot promise it for any of the five.
All five awards carry a date, and all five are recurring, so a cycle you miss this year comes round again. The busiest months across the set are October, with two deadlines, then September and December with one each.
These are the awards closing soonest:
The Stigler Center programme runs for 12 weeks, from 19 March to 31 May. Durations across the set range widely: one award funds up to the first two years of a programme, another runs for 4 years, and the Knight-Hennessy Scholars programme is noted as funding up to a stated point in a course of study. Check the individual pages for the duration attached to the level you are applying at.
Nigeria is the second-largest source of international students in the United States, with 16,632 Nigerian students recorded there in 2023, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. That number is context, not comfort. It tells you the pipeline is well established and that admissions offices in the United States read Nigerian transcripts regularly. It does not tell you anything about your own chances.
What the number is useful for is practical: there are Nigerian students already on these campuses who have paid for transcripts, sat IELTS, chased referees and handled the courier. Where an award's page allows you to make contact, a short, specific question to a current student is worth more than another hour of searching.
Work from the deadlines, not from the providers' reputations. Two awards close in October, which is the nearest pressure point on this page.
Five awards is a short list, and four of them are open to you on nationality. The work is in the documents, and the documents take longer from Nigeria than most applicants expect.
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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