The Churchill Scholarship is awarded by the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States to graduates of the more than one hundred colleges and universities invited to participate in the Churchill Scholarship Program, to pursue research and study in engineering, mathematics, or the biological and physical sciences for one year at the University of Cambridge. Churchill Scholars reside in Churchill College.
Applicants for the Churchill Scholarship must be U.S. citizens between the ages of 19 and 26 and may not hold the doctoral degree.
The first Churchill Scholarships, three in number, were awarded in 1963 and funded one year of study. Shortly thereafter, the Scholarships were available either for one-year programs or for doctoral studies at Cambridge. In the early 1980's the Foundation began to support only one-year programs in order to increase the number of Churchill Scholars. In its early years the Foundation also made small travel grants to Churchill Fellows, distinguished senior faculty at American colleges and universities who would spend one year at the College. Eight of the Churchill Fellows won the Nobel Prize.
Since 1963 some four fifty hundred Churchill Scholarships have been awarded. Fourteen Scholarships are awarded each year and currently provide between $44,000 and $50,000 of support to cover all university and college fees (i.e., tuition) at the University of Cambridge, a living allowance, visa fees, round-trip airfare between the United States and the United Kingdom, a $500 Travel Award, and the possibility of an additional $2,000 Special Research Grant.
As of 2012, the schools with the most Churchill Scholars are:
| School | Number of Scholars |
|---|---|
| Princeton University | 37 |
| Harvard University | 34 |
| Cornell University | 20 |
| Duke University | 19 |
| University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 17 |
| Yale University | 17 |
| California Institute of Technology | 16 |
| Harvey Mudd College | 16 |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | 16 |
| Brown University | 12 |
| University of Chicago | 12 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 12 |
| Purdue University | 11 |
| Stanford University | 11 |
| University of Rochester | 11 |
| Johns Hopkins University | 10 |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 9 |
| Northwestern University | 9 |
| University of Michigan at Ann Arbor | 9 |
| Vanderbilt University | 9 |
Famous quotes containing the words churchill and/or scholarship:
“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
“The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)