Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans: Application Guide (2026)

Most generic scholarship-listicle coverage of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans treats "immigrants and children of immigrants" as a self-explanatory phrase and moves straight to the dollar amount. It isn't self-explanatory. The fellowship runs on a specific, documented set of eligibility categories that decide whether you can apply at all, several older university fellowships-office pages describe an outdated, narrower version of that rule, and the two most commonly cited funding figures genuinely disagree with each other. This guide covers the actual eligibility mechanics, the real current timeline, and what the award does and doesn't fund.

The current cycle is closed, here's the real timeline

As of this writing, the 2027 fellowship cycle's deadline, October 29, 2026 at 2:00pm ET per the fellowship's own site, has already passed. Fellows from that application round are announced publicly in April 2027, with stipend and tuition support beginning that fall. If you're planning ahead rather than applying this cycle, the realistic next opportunity is the 2028 round, which historically opens for applications the following spring. Don't assume next year's deadline lands on the same date, confirm it directly on pdsoros.org once it's posted, and if you're still an undergraduate, your own institution's national fellowships office is worth contacting now so you're not scrambling once the next cycle opens.

Who actually qualifies: the categories most summaries blur

The fellowship defines "immigrant" and "child of immigrants" as two separate eligibility paths, and each has real detail worth reading closely rather than skimming. You qualify directly as an immigrant if you're a naturalized US citizen (whether you naturalized yourself or became a citizen as a minor through a parent's naturalization), a current green card holder, or an asylee or refugee. A fourth path exists for people who aren't naturalized citizens or green card holders at all but completed both high school and college inside the United States. None of these require you to have been born in the US, and none of them require your parents to have any particular status.

The "child of immigrants" path is where generic coverage gets genuinely imprecise. The current standard requires that both of your birth parents were born outside the United States and were not themselves US citizens at the time of their own births, meaning neither parent could have claimed citizenship automatically at birth even before any later naturalization. This is a real document worth reading in full on pdsoros.org rather than trusting a secondary paraphrase, because several university fellowships-office pages describe an older, narrower version of this rule (specifically, requiring both parents to already be naturalized citizens by the time you apply), which doesn't match the fellowship's current stated criteria. If you were born in the US and are relying on this category, confirm your specific family situation against the current page before assuming you're excluded or included based on an outdated summary.

One hard age rule applies regardless of which category you qualify under: you must be 30 years old or younger as of the application deadline. There's no exception structure for this the way some other named fellowships carve out for military service or other life circumstances, so confirm your exact age against the deadline date before investing time in an application.

What it pays, and where the numbers genuinely disagree

This is a real, unresolved discrepancy across sources rather than a case of one clearly outdated figure and one clearly current one. One commonly cited breakdown describes a $25,000 annual stipend plus coverage of 50 percent of tuition and required fees, up to $20,000 per year, running for two years. A separate figure that shows up across multiple aggregator sites instead describes the award in total terms, as $90,000 in combined stipend and tuition support across the full two-year term. Both framings appear on sources that otherwise look credible, and this guide can't resolve which one reflects the fellowship's current published terms without its own official rate sheet. If you're weighing this fellowship against another offer or trying to budget your actual cost of attendance, pull the current figure directly from pdsoros.org rather than relying on either number here.

Up to 30 new fellowships are awarded each year, a meaningfully larger annual cohort than several of the narrowly scoped named scholarships covered elsewhere on this site, though still a genuinely competitive national pool.

Any field, any US graduate school, including professional degrees

Unlike scholarships scoped to a single discipline or a single country of study, the Soros fellowship funds full-time graduate study in any field at any graduate school in the United States, and that includes professional degrees (MD, JD, MBA, and similar) alongside research master's and PhD programs. If your actual plan is a funded PhD specifically, this fellowship is a genuinely useful source of stipend and tuition support layered on top of, not instead of, your program's own departmental funding offer. It doesn't replace the need to be admitted on your own merits, and it doesn't arrange a research advisor for you the way a departmental assistantship offer sometimes implies. Our guide to finding a funded PhD supervisor in the US covers that separate relationship, which matters just as much whether or not you're also carrying external fellowship funding.

What the application actually involves

Beyond the standard graduate-school application materials you'd submit to any program, the Soros application itself centers on a personal essay describing your immigrant story and how it's shaped your goals, plus a separate statement on your specific graduate study plans. Finalists are invited to an interview round, a format consistent with how most highly selective national fellowships (Rhodes, Marshall, and others covered elsewhere on this site) make their final decisions, rather than deciding purely on paper. Because the essay prompt is specifically about your immigrant or family immigration story, a generic "why I want to pursue graduate study" essay recycled from another application won't fit the actual prompt, the fellowship is explicitly looking for how your specific background connects to your academic trajectory, not just that you have a strong trajectory on its own.

A common point of confusion: this isn't the same thing as George Soros's foundation

Because the Soros name is widely associated with George Soros's Open Society Foundations, a separate and much larger philanthropic organization with its own, differently structured grants and fellowships, it's worth being direct about the actual connection. The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans was established by Paul Soros, George Soros's brother, and his wife Daisy Soros, specifically to support immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate study in the United States, as a tribute to their own experience arriving in the US as immigrants. It's administered independently, with its own eligibility rules, application, and selection committee, not a program you'd find listed under Open Society Foundations' own funding opportunities. If you've seen "Soros fellowship" or "Soros scholarship" referenced in a different context, confirm which specific program is actually being described before assuming it's this one, the name alone doesn't distinguish between two genuinely separate philanthropic efforts.

How this differs from the UK-bound named scholarships on this site

Most of the named scholarships covered elsewhere here, Rhodes, Marshall, Knight-Hennessy, and others, fund study abroad, typically at a single named institution or a narrow set of partner universities outside the US. The Soros fellowship runs in the opposite direction: it's specifically for graduate study inside the United States, at any accredited US graduate school you're independently admitted to, and it's open to a much broader eligibility pool defined by immigration and family history rather than undergraduate institution or citizenship status. If you're a US-bound applicant weighing funding sources rather than a US citizen weighing UK-bound ones, this is a genuinely different category of award, worth applying to alongside, not instead of, your program's own funding offer and any field-specific fellowships you separately qualify for.

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Common questions