Short answer first. Most scholarships are run by universities themselves. Our dataset holds 494 scholarships for international students, and 354 of them, 72 percent, are university awards: the institution discounting its own places. Government schemes, the famous flags like Chevening and DAAD, are 89. Everything else, foundations, intergovernmental bodies and companies together, is 51.
The directory, by sponsor
| Sponsor type | Scholarships | Share of 494 |
|---|---|---|
| Universities | 354 | 72% |
| Governments | 89 | 18% |
| Private foundations and NGOs | 39 | 8% |
| Intergovernmental bodies | 10 | 2% |
| Companies | 2 | Under 1% |
A single listing page never shows this mix, which is why scholarship hunting feels more glamorous than it is. The named government schemes dominate attention because they are few, large and fully funded; the everyday reality is hundreds of university awards, most of them partial, decided by admissions offices rather than national competitions. Strategy follows the census: the government schemes are a small number of high-effort applications, and the university long tail is where most funded places actually sit.
The mix, drawn
The money follows the same shape. Only 248 of the 494 records state an award amount at all, and the median of those is $15,000, a partial scholarship, with the largest at $300,000. Even the fully funded end is mostly a university story: of the 96 records flagged fully funded, 57 are university awards and 24 are government schemes, with 9 intergovernmental and 6 from private or NGO sponsors. The famous national competitions are real, but an applicant who only applies to them is fishing in the smaller half of the fully funded pond.
The near-absence of corporate sponsors is its own finding: 2 of 494. Companies fund chairs, prizes and internships, but as scholarship sponsors for international students they barely register in a directory count. The ScholarshipMatch checker filters the same 494 by eligibility, and our earlier census of what the 494 actually offer counts the funding wording sponsor by sponsor.
A caution on the count itself: 50 of the 494 records carry the dataset's verified flag, meaning the entry was checked against the sponsor's own page; the rest are structured listings awaiting the same pass. The census describes the directory as it stands today. Treat any single record as a lead to confirm on the sponsor's site before planning around it, which is the same advice this site gives for deadlines.
Sources: listing form modeled on a Scholars App scholarship listing (scholarsapp.com). All counts from this site's scholarship dataset (494 records), read November 5, 2026.