Explore the William T. Grant Scholars Program: 2026 Application Guidelines

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Closing Date: 30 June 2026

Explore the William T. Grant Scholars Program: 2026 Application Guidelines

The 2026 application guide for the William T. Grant Scholars Program is now online!

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

New for 2026, the updated application guidelines provide an expanded overview of the Scholars Program, including specifics about eligibility criteria, review processes, required materials, and its research interests.

This year’s application will open on March 27, with a deadline of June 30.

Overview

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. William T. Grant Foundation recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.

Focus Areas

Reducing Inequality

In this focus area, William T. Grant Foundation fund research studies that examine programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant origins.

Research Interests

William T. Grant Foundation research interests center on studies that examine ways to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. The foundation welcomes descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality.

Recognizing that findings about programs and practices that reduce inequality will have limited societal impact until the structures that create inequality in the first place have been transformed, the Foundation is particularly interested in research to uproot systemic racism and the structural foundations of inequality that limit the life chances of young people.

The foundations invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and encourage investigations into various youth serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education.

Improving the Use of Research Evidence

In this focus area, the foundation support research studies that examine strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. William T. Grant Foundation seek proposals for studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, public agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, community organizers, and other decision-makers that generally shape youth-serving systems in the United States.

While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, William T. Grant Foundation lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference.

Research Interests

The research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine strategies to improve the use, usefulness, and impact of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. The foundation welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. William T. Grant Foundation also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, the foundation welcomes measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.

Awards

Award recipients are designated as William T. Grant Scholars. Each year, four to six Scholars are selected. Each Scholar receives exactly $425,000 over five years, including up to 7.5% indirect costs.Awards begin July 1 of the award year and are made to the applicant’s institution.

The award must not replace the institution’s current support of the applicant’s research.

Selection Criteria

Applicant

Applicant demonstrates potential to become an influential researcher.
Prior training and publications indicate the applicant’s ability to conduct and communicate creative, sophisticated research.
Applicant has a promising track record of first authored, high-quality empirical publications in peer-reviewed outlets. The quality of publications is more important than the quantity.
Applicant will significantly expand their expertise through this award. The applicant has identified area(s) in which the award will appreciably expand their expertise and has provided specific details in the research and mentoring plans. Expansion of expertise can involve a different discipline, method, and/or content area than the applicants’ prior research and training.

Research Plan

Research plan aligns with one of the Foundation’s focus areas.
- Proposed research on reducing inequality should aim to build, test, or increase understanding of a program, policy, or practice to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States.
- Proposed research on improving the use of research evidence should inform strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5–25 in the United States.
Proposals reflect a mastery of relevant theory and empirical findings, and clearly state the theoretical and empirical contributions they will make to the existing research base.
Projects may focus on either generating or testing theory, depending on the state of knowledge about a topic.
Although William T. Grant Foundation do not expect that any one project will or should impact policy or practice, the findings should have relevance for policy or practice.
Research plan reflects high standards of evidence and rigorous methods commensurate with the proposal’s goals. The latter years or projects of the research plan may, by necessity, be described in less detail than those of the first few, but successful applicants provide enough specificity for reviewers to be assured of the rigor and feasibility of the plan.
Research designs, methods, and analysis plans clearly fit the research questions under study.
- Discussions of case selection, sampling, and measurement include a compelling rationale that they are well-suited to address the research questions or hypotheses. For example, samples are appropriate in size and composition to answer the study’s questions. Qualitative case selection—whether critical, comparative, or otherwise—are appropriate to answer the proposed questions.
- The quantitative and/or qualitative analysis plan demonstrate awareness of the strengths and limits of the specific analytic techniques and how they will be applied in the current project.
- If proposing mixed methods, plans for integrating the methods and data are clear and compelling.
- Where relevant, there is attention to generalizability of findings and to statistical power to detect meaningful effects.
Research plan demonstrates adequate consideration of the gender, ethnic, and cultural appropriateness of concepts, methods, and measures.
Research plan is feasible. The work can be successfully completed given the resources and time frame. Some research plans require additional funding, and in those cases, applicants have viable plans for acquiring that support.
Research plan is cohesive, and multiple studies (if proposed) are well-integrated.
Research plan will significantly extend the applicant’s expertise in new and significant ways. Applicant provides specific details about how the research activities will stretch their expertise.

Many applicants to the Scholars program are researchers trained in quantitative methods who identify learning qualitative methods as at least one area into which they will stretch their expertise. This is a laudable and valuable stretch that enriches the proposed research and develops new skills that can be carried into future projects. What is often missing from these proposals, however, is a robust set of activities to support such a stretch.

Rather than a single activity, such as a monthly meeting with a mentor expert in qualitative methods, successful applicants detail a combination of activities, such as taking courses; enrolling in summer workshops; getting continuous feedback as they develop data collection tools, practice qualitative data collection techniques, and analyze qualitative data; and consulting with an advisory committee, in addition to frequent and regular meetings with a mentor expert in qualitative methods. New methodological and analytical skills take time and effort to develop, and reviewers expect to see research plans that reflect this.

Mentoring Plan

Applicant proposes one to two mentors for the first two years of the award. Two is typical and recommended. (The mentoring plan for the latter years will be developed in consultation with Foundation staff after the second year of the program.)
The mentoring plan and mentor letters demonstrate that all parties have identified and agreed on specific goals that expand the applicant’s expertise in the ways outlined in the research plan.
Each mentor has appropriate credentials, expertise, and resources to aid the applicant’s acquisition of the new expertise.