Financial and Intellectual Support

The OAC offers various forms of support for Objectivists engaged in or working toward careers as professional intellectuals. The support we offer falls into the following categories:

Financial Support

Tuition Waivers and Phone Scholarships

Most full-time students receive full tuition waivers and phone scholarships. Scholarships are intended to help defray some of the costs of phoning in to classes. Currently, the OAC offers phone scholarships at the rate of $.04/minute of scheduled class time attended by the student. All undergraduate financial assistance is conditional upon maintaining a B- average in our program.

Tuition waivers and phone scholarships are reviewed on an annual basis.  If an OAC student’s status changes (i.e. they graduate from school, cease to be a full-time student, etc.), they may lose their tuition waiver and phone scholarship.  After notification of the loss of the waiver, the student will receive a tuition invoice for all future classes.

Conference Scholarships

ARI offers scholarships that enable students to attend Objectivist summer conferences free of charge.

Grants

ARI offers two basic kinds of grants: first, grants that help students get into and through graduate school; second, grants that help disseminate Objectivism. Please visit our grant page for a fuller description of the kinds of grants we offer.

Intellectual Support

Conferences

ARI occasionally sponsors meetings at which graduate students present their scholarly papers or deliver mock lectures. These presentations are critiqued by an Objectivist intellectual, who evaluates the methodology and content of the paper or lecture.

Internships

Each summer ARI offers paid internships, which give aspiring intellectuals a taste of what it is like to work at ARI. The internship is a work-study program: half of the time the intern assists one or more of ARI’s departments with office work and half of the time the intern studies Objectivism under the direction of one of ARI’s resident fellows. Sometimes the interns will give a presentation to ARI’s staff on a philosophical topic the intern is interested in.

Mentoring

Students who are working towards careers as intellectuals have the opportunity to interact with intellectuals who have already established careers. If one is interested in philosophy, for instance, our intellectuals can provide guidance on the pros and cons of applying to a certain graduate school.

N.B. The financial and intellectual support we offer is typically available only to those in the field of philosophy or cognate fields such as history and psychology. All financial support is subject to the approval of the dean of the OAC.