If you’re a high school senior in Indiana, there’s a scholarship in your own backyard that could pay your entire tuition bill for four years. It’s called the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program, and it’s run through your local community foundation rather than a national organization, which means your neighbors are the ones deciding who gets it.
Here’s how the program works and what you’ll need to do to be considered.
What Is the Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program?
This is a full-ride scholarship in the truest sense of the phrase. It covers your entire tuition, required fees, and gives you a stipend for books, and it does that for all four years of your degree. What it won’t touch is your housing, meals, or getting back and forth from campus, so you’ll still want to have a plan for those costs through other aid or savings.
Only 147 of these scholarships go out across the whole state each year, so while the award itself is enormous, the odds depend heavily on how many strong applicants come out of your particular county.
Who Can Apply?
Before you get your hopes up, make sure you fit these requirements:
- You graduated from an Indiana high school that’s accredited by the State Board of Education or by a nationally or regionally recognized accrediting body
- You currently live in Indiana
- You’re planning to study full-time toward a bachelor’s degree
- You’re open to attending any Indiana college or university, public or private, as long as it’s accredited by the Higher Learning Commission
You can use the scholarship at any qualifying four-year school in the state, so you’re not locked into one particular college before you apply.
However, additional selection criteria, procedures and application due dates can vary by county so make sure you get the details from your local office as soon as possible.
How It Works
Each of Indiana’s community foundations runs its own selection process for the students in its county, and that means the criteria, the paperwork, and the deadlines all shift depending on where you live.
Because of that, there’s no single date you can circle on your calendar for this one. Your best move is to reach out to the community foundation serving your home county directly and ask what their timeline and requirements look like this year.
How to Apply
Since the application details vary so much by county, your local community foundation is the source of truth here. Visit their website or stop by in person to find out what they need from you, including any essays, recommendation letters, or transcripts, and make sure you know their deadline well in advance.
If you want to learn more about the scholarship overall, the Independent Colleges of Indiana program page covers how the partnership works statewide.
Relief Recap
A scholarship that covers four full years of tuition doesn’t come along often, and the fact that this one is rooted in your own county makes it feel a lot more within reach than some of the bigger national programs. If you’re an Indiana senior with your sights set on a four-year degree, it’s worth a call to your community foundation to see what they need from you this year.
For more ways to stretch your education dollars, check out our guide to scholarships for low income students or browse our full collection of Indiana assistance programs.
