Scholarship Opportunities

All applicants are considered for merit scholarships; no additional application is required. Scholarships are awarded at the time of admission and are renewable for up to eight semesters, provided students remain in good standing.

For applicants entering in the fall of 2025, merit scholarships will be offered up to $35,000 per year. Merit scholarship recipients are selected based on a holistic review of applications.

Preserving the Chesapeake Bay begins here.

Global water and food security begin and end with human connections to local waterways and landscapes. The Chesapeake Watershed Leadership Fellows program is designed for students with an interest in Earth and Environmental Sciences and allied social science disciplines, including Economics, Business, and Public Policy, to engage in field and laboratory research within the local Conestoga River watershed, a tributary to the Chesapeake Bay, in southeastern Pennsylvania.

New ways to restore streams, wetlands, and floodplains have been pioneered within this watershed by F&M faculty, with numerous innovative restoration sites adjacent to the F&M College campus providing you and your fellows with direct access to a wide range of learning opportunities. The Chesapeake Bay is the third-largest estuary in the world, and the largest in the United States, but local watersheds like the Conestoga play a major role in the health and well-being of the Bay itself.

As a Fellow, you will gain fundamental knowledge about critical water and landscape systems, and partner with local to federal organizations and environmental engineering firms to improve the health and security of these waterways by:

• working alongside experienced F&M faculty in Earth and Environmental Science and social science disciplines — including Economics, Business, and Public Policy — to improve restoration effectiveness and economic benefits
• participating in original, action-oriented research in local watersheds, with the goal of improving stream and groundwater quality and aquatic ecosystem health
• conducting research that will have immediate impacts on advancing primary academic knowledge across many disciplines
• providing critical data and information to the local, state, and federal agencies that decide restoration policies and actions
• broadening educational opportunities, enhancing public communications, and facilitating community outreach through this research

Faculty Mentors: Dorothy Merritts, Bob Walter, Patrick Fleming, and Chris Williams

Grow as writers — and affect cultural change.

Franklin & Marshall College has always been known for the excellence of our writing education. For us, the act of writing is inseparable from critical thinking, creative invention, and leadership. Students who come to F&M, regardless of their ultimate major, learn how to write so that they can have social and cultural impact. Writing is a gateway for finding and expanding audiences for their ideas and research, moving people with their words, and leading meaningful change. 

Students who share a passion for writing, reading, literary activism, and creative expression have the unique opportunity to participate in a vital writing community during their college years at the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House. This program space and community hub is an actual house that serves as an incubator for students in all academic disciplines to develop their writing and related creative projects. In just the past few years, students at Writers House have published their own work in journals, founded new writing groups and literary journals, brought well-known authors to campus for readings and workshops, taught creative writing in local public schools and community centers, hosted a campus-wide Banned Books Fair, and met with alumni in writing-related fields, among many other projects. Students here find their voices figuratively and literally while connecting with both faculty writers from across the College and a deep pool of successful alumni in writing and creative fields.

Our Creative Writing & Cultural Leadership Fellows program is designed for prospective students with a keen interest in creative writing of all kinds and/or related creative fields including publishing, journalism, storytelling, cultural criticism, arts and museum administration, design thinking, and performance. Students who are selected as Creative Writing & Cultural Leadership Fellows will:

• Explore the craft of creative writing and grow as writers.
• Gain knowledge of literary and cultural activism on both F&M’s campus and in Lancaster.
• Partner with one of several local cultural and educational institutions to develop a writing-related program, event, workshop, or other project for a new audience.
• Work within the Writers House community to help produce one new writing-related program or project on campus.
• Meet several times a semester with alumni who work in writing and related creative fields.
• Participate in leadership training through the Leadership & Performance Lab.
• Develop experience, expertise, and confidence as both writers and cultural leaders.

Throughout the program, Fellows will receive individual faculty mentorship and programmatic support.      

Faculty Mentor: Kerry Sherin Wright

A blueprint for tomorrow’s innovators.

This program is crafted to immerse you in the core values of entrepreneurship and innovation, drawing inspiration from the dynamic world of startup culture. Through this experience, you will develop a "builder's mindset" — learning to identify problems, create solutions, and lead with resilience. The program is deeply connected to the vibrant Lancaster community, providing hands-on projects and mentorship with local leaders, ensuring you gain valuable, real-world experience from day one. It's a chance for you to not just learn about leadership, but to actively practice it and make a tangible impact. 

When you become a Future Founders Fellow, you gain access to a suite of programmatic characteristics designed to set you up for success from the beginning, including: 

• a personal board of advisers, consisting of a mix of senior students, professional coaches, and local Lancaster mentors
• early access to popular entrepreneurship classes
• dedicated leadership workshops
• experiential learning projects with local organizations

Beyond these tangible benefits, the program is intentionally structured to foster a supportive and social community among you and your fellows. Through these and other dedicated activities and shared experiences, you will build a tight-knit support network, mirroring the bonds often found among athletic teams or members of Greek organizations. These connections will not only enrich your time at F&M, but will also provide you with a lasting network of peers who can support your journey long after graduation. 

These tools and connections are provided early on to help you thrive both at F&M and in your future endeavors.

Faculty Mentor: Joaquin Villarreal

Leadership through service to others.

Public service, at its core, is the pursuit of the common good. Those dedicated to public service aim to strengthen communities through democratic engagement and collaboration with community members. The Public Service Leadership Fellows program is designed to help students like you develop the skills you need to innovate in the public sphere and affect positive change as future leaders.

As a Public Service Leadership Fellow, you will:

• participate in four professional development workshops during the academic year. These workshops will focus on specific leadership competencies borrowed from the “Public Service Leadership Model” of the Partnership for Public Service
• attend periodic, seminar-style discussions with local public servants (these discussions will allow Fellows to learn from public servants about their career paths as well as the challenges and opportunities public servants face in doing their work)
• shadow local public servants at least twice during the academic year
• build bonds with other Fellows through social events like “public service movie nights”
• prepare, in consultation with the program’s academic director, an end-of-year self-assessment that examines the Fellow’s leadership preparedness (including personal and academic growth over the course of the year) and develops their long-term public service goals

Faculty Mentor: Stephen Medvic

F&M is a multidivisional institution that sponsors NCAA Division I wrestling and 24 Division III teams. Following recent legislative changes that make it permissible for multi-divisional institutions to apply all Division I rules — including financial aid — to their Division I programs, F&M now offers athletic scholarships to qualifying wrestling student-athletes. The awarding of athletic scholarships is determined by the head coach.

F&M partners with the New York City and Miami chapters of The Posse Foundation to select and award full-tuition scholarships to 10 incoming students from each city. Posse Scholars follow the scholarship process via the Posse Foundation.

F&M is a member of the Tuition Exchange, Inc., a consortium of approximately 700 colleges and universities that offer scholarships to the dependents of eligible employees at member institutions.

The need-based Paul and Rose Wiener Scholarship is awarded to incoming students who demonstrate academic excellence and a commitment to the Jewish community through volunteerism and youth activities. Awarded students receive a renewable scholarship up to $5,000 based on annual review.

To be considered for a Paul and Rose Wiener Scholarship, prospective students must submit an application for general admission and a Paul and Rose Wiener Scholarship Application by January 6.

Please download and mail in the following application to be considered. Mail in instructions are within the application.

Apply now

The Arthur F. and Selma C. Walters Scholarship is awarded to incoming students with preferences given to a) present, past, and retired employees of the Manheim Auto Auctions and their children or grandchildren, b) students with affiliations with Unitarian-Universalist churches, and c) graduates of Lancaster County high schools. Once you have submitted your application to Franklin & Marshall College, please email financialaid@fandm.edu to inform them that you meet one of the preferences shown above.

Arthur F. “Art” Walters is known locally as the founder of the Manheim Auto Auction, located approximately 7 miles from F&M's campus. This business grew into the world's largest wholesale auto auction, selling millions of vehicles each year. Art was a natural entrepreneur with numerous other business ventures in the Lancaster area. Art was also known for his love of learning and debate, as well as his acceptance of diverse opinions and beliefs. Art believed that all people were equal, regardless of age, gender, race, identity or beliefs. His humanistic convictions were expressed in his business practices and friendships.

The Adams & Gustafson Music Achievement Award is offered to rising sophomores who have shown distinction and exhibit potential in their music studies at F&M. The award is $1,250 per semester ($2,500 per year) and is renewable for a total of six semesters pending eligibility. The award is named in honor of Courtney Adams and Bruce Gustafson, two of the founders of the modern-day F&M Music Department. This award is designed to recognize students who exemplify the passion for and intellectual commitment to music that Professors Adams and Gustafson epitomized.