National Council for the Social Studies is pleased to announce the inaugural year of the Rho Kappa Scholarship! The scholarship is designed to help students with college, university, or trade school education costs. High school senior members of Rho Kappa are eligible to apply for the $1,500 grant. The scholarship will be annually awarded in June.
Important: Applications must be submitted by the Rho Kappa Advisor.
All applications must be submitted by the Rho Kappa Advisor. The advisor will serve as the point of contact in the event that their chosen student is selected. Please make sure that you have the student’s name, school, city, state, email, and phone number to get in contact with the student if selected.
Eligibility Requirements
To apply for the Rho Kappa scholarship, students must meet ALL of the following requirements
- Must be an inducted, graduating high school senior of a Rho Kappa National Social Studies Honor Society Chapter in good standing.
- Must have at least a 3.75 cumulative GPA (or the equivalent scaling).
Submission Requirements
All applications must include:
- A 500-word essay that answers the following prompt:
- In your own words, what does it mean to be civically engaged in 2025? How has this been demonstrated in your year-to-date community service project, and how can this engagement be sustained in the future?
- A letter of recommendation from a sponsor of the project, a social studies teacher, or an organization that the student worked with on a service project.
Application Requirements
The Rho Kappa Advisory Council will review one application from each Rho Kappa chapter. Advisors must facilitate an initial round of applications from qualifying students and then select one application to submit to the Rho Kappa Advisory Council from their chapter. Submitting more than one application from your school will disqualify your chapter from consideration
Application Rubric
NCSS has provided the following rubric to facilitate the judging of applicants. The Rho Kappa Advisory Council will use this rubric to select the recipient of the Rho Kappa scholarship. It is highly advised to use this criterion when selecting the final applicant from your school.
Click here to download the rubric.