Grants and Writing Resources for Sciences Po

Four minutes was enough. In April 2026 a second-year bachelor's student at the Collège universitaire took first prize in the CiMENA student video contest, run by Sciences Po's Middle East and North Africa programme, with a short film about the Lebanese diaspora in Senegal. The jury's vote was unanimous. The film, Teranga, takes its title from the Wolof word for hospitality and brings several generations together on screen.

Paying for the Doctorate

Sciences Po hires doctoral students on three-year contrats doctoraux, funded by the school alone or with partners and awarded mainly on academic excellence. Gross monthly pay for research work was set at 2,100 euros as of 1 January 2024. Since 2025-26, every doctoral student enrolled at Sciences Po has been exempt from tuition from the first through the sixth year of the doctorate; the student life fee (CVEC) is still due.

Fieldwork and conference trips draw on the Fonds de soutien à la recherche doctorale, run by the École doctorale with the research units. It replaced the old mobility aid. Students in years one to four receive a set allowance, and a separate competitive call is open to every doctoral student. Sciences Po also takes part in the Alliance Call for Doctoral Mobility with Columbia, École Polytechnique and Panthéon-Sorbonne, which funds transatlantic research projects by doctoral students at the four schools.

Scholarships for Bachelor's and Master's Students

The Émile Boutmy scholarships, named for the school's founder, go to students from outside Europe on academic merit. For 2026-27 the bachelor's award comes in two tiers, a full tuition exemption or an exemption of 9,500 euros, and the master's award is an exemption of 18,500 euros.

For students who are tax residents of the European Economic Area, tuition is set by family income; in 2024-25, 36 percent of students paid nothing. Holders of a CROUS scholarship pay no tuition and can receive extra aid from Sciences Po worth up to 75 percent of their CROUS award. Mobility grants help the students with the fewest resources meet the added cost of the third year abroad, and emergency aid covers sudden setbacks or a late scholarship payment.

Where Graduate Research Appears

The Sciences Po Graduate Review is a student-run journal that publishes research by master's and doctoral students from every discipline at the school, twice a year in print and online. Current and former graduate students can submit in English or French. A full article starts as an abstract and runs to about 30,000 characters. The shorter "5-pager" presents an idea, a preliminary result or a methodological reflection. The editorial board reads each piece, brings in specialist academics where needed, and returns outside feedback to the author.

Library Help and the Thesis File

Stuck at the start of a paper, or holding too many references? Book a meeting with a librarian by writing to formation.bib@sciencespo.fr with the topic, the due date and your instructor's name. The library's services for doctoral students add tailored training in research tools and advice on author rights, persistent identifiers and open-archive deposit.

For the thesis defence, the full text goes in as a PDF (version 1.4 to 1.7, or PDF/A) that has passed the FACILE validation test. The school's style sheet standardises the layout and builds the table of contents, and it is required for any thesis to be released online. A thesis written in another language ends with a ten-page summary in French. Sciences Po prints the copies and pays the printing costs, and the degree is granted once the corrected thesis is deposited. Since 2008 theses have been archived in SPIRE, the school's open archive; online release is optional, with an embargo of six months to five years available.

Before a mémoire or thesis goes through the FACILE test and on to the jury, our editors can give it a final check for grammar, consistency and format. See our Sciences Po dissertation and thesis editing and Sciences Po essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• ESL Academic Writing: Overcoming Common Grammar Habits
• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis