Oberlin-Pioneer Undergraduate Research Fellowship

The Oberlin-Pioneer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (OPURF) is a prestigious program designed to empower talented Pioneer Scholars who go on to attend Oberlin College with unparalleled opportunities for continued academic and professional success.

This highly-selective fellowship provides:

A comprehensive, research-focused 10-day orientation program at the start of college
A dedicated professional advising team for the duration of the undergraduate experience, including weekly meetings with a senior mentor during the first year of college
A research-intensive Winter Term project in the first year
Funding up to $9,000 and placement assistance for two summer research projects
Funding up to $5,000 and placement assistance for a summer internship

Eligibility

This fellowship is open to students from any country who have successfully completed the Pioneer Research Program with a B+ or higher and have been admitted to Oberlin College & Conservatory. To remain in the program, students must maintain a GPA of 3.3 or higher throughout their time at Oberlin.

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If you are compelled to live at the intersection of innovation and discovery and embrace the frontiers of new knowledge, you’re in the right place.

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Research Opportunities at Oberlin

Funded Research Opportunities

Fellows will receive funding for two summer research projects, with the flexibility to choose their own research focus. These projects can be conducted either on campus, where students will receive a $3,500 stipend and free housing, or off-campus, for which students will be awarded a $4,500 stipend. Each project will span eight weeks, providing ample time for students to deeply explore their research interests. Fellows also will be eligible for Oberlin’s Internship+ Commitment, which provides up to $5,000 in funding to support a summer internship of the student’s choice.

A student and professor work together in a lab. — Photo credit: Tanya Rosen-Jones ’97

Year-Round Support and Programming

Throughout the academic year, a professional advising team composed of experts in international, developmental, academic, and faculty support will ensure that students receive comprehensive advice tailored to their individual needs. Students will receive individualized immigration and visa support, research and career mentoring, course selection and planning advice, support from dedicated faculty members, and much more. In addition, Fellows will benefit from personalized guidance and support from a dedicated cohort near-peer advisor. Weekly meetings with a senior mentor will provide tips on thriving at Oberlin and preparing for a successful career after graduation.

In January of the first year, Fellows will participate in a research-intensive Winter Term project, designed to hone their research skills and prepare them for their summer research projects.

A student and professor work examine something on a screen. — Photo credit: Jacob Strauss

Pre-Orientation Program

Fellows will begin their journey with a comprehensive 10-day orientation program. During this time, students will connect with Oberlin faculty who are conducting cutting-edge research and explore various research spaces across the campus. The program includes an introduction to the unique advantages of an Oberlin education, along with professional development workshops that provide valuable insights into fellowships and career opportunities.

For international students, there are special sessions designed to ease the transition to academic life in the U.S. The orientation also includes tailored cohort instruction, preparing students for rigorous higher education by focusing on advanced writing, critical reading, research skills, and American academic conventions. Throughout the program, cohort-building activities help students foster strong connections within their fellowship community.

A group of students casually chat. One is wearing a Lab Crawl tee shirt. — Photo credit: Tanya Rosen-Jones ’97

A professor and student work at a computer screen showing detailed graphs of data.

Why wait for graduate school to get started?

Oberlin students have access to equipment and labs that one would expect to find only at a large research university. This includes our supercomputer, scanning electron microscope, confocal microscope, cell culture labs, DNA sequencing equipment, and NMR spectrometers.

Arts & Sciences Admissions

About Oberlin, Pioneer, and the Fellowship

Pioneer Academics and Oberlin College (the accrediting institution for all Pioneer Scholars) share fundamental commitments to superlative academic quality and inquiry across a wide range of disciplines. Together they have created the highly-selective Oberlin-Pioneer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program to identify and nurture the most promising students in the world: those who are never satisfied in classrooms that teach only what is already known.

Indeed, this has been Oberlin’s mission for two centuries. With an ethos that favors intellectual curiosity, creative risk-taking, and collaboration over competition, Oberlin prepares its graduates with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives essential to confronting complex global issues and to creating positive change and value in every field.

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Oberlin’s Partnership with Pioneer Academics

Oberlin and Pioneer Admissions Information

A good researcher seeks evidence. Consider:

For the last century, Oberlin alumni have gone on to earn more PhDs than the graduates of any other baccalaureate institution, and our medical and law school placements are equally impressive.
Oberlin alumni represent a full one percent of the National Academy of Sciences’ membership -- almost unimaginable for a small liberal arts college, and a testament to the creativity that our scientists develop here.
Oberlin graduates have garnered a range of prestigious awards, including 265 Fulbrights and dozens of National Science Graduate Research fellowships, as well as Goldwater, Watson, Truman, Udall, Beinecke, Gates Cambridge, Rhodes, Marshall, and Luce honors, among others.
Our alumni include 14 MacArthur “Genius” Fellows, 4 Nobel Laureates, and 9 Pulitzer Prize recipients.
Academic Influence, a ranking that measures the impact of an institution’s alumni and faculty on the world, has placed Oberlin among its top-ten colleges every year since its inception.

Students like you deserve the full attention of their professors.

Unlike the many universities that depend on advanced students rather than faculty to teach their undergraduates, Oberlin College does not have graduate students or post-docs. All classes are taught by professors, and nearly 100% hold the terminal degree in their field from a top-ranked university.

The Oberlin-Pioneer Undergraduate Research Fellowship is designed to take the collaborative enterprise between you and your professors to an even higher level. Your faculty mentors—world-renowned scholars, researchers, teachers, and citizens—will guide and push you, invested fully in your promise and in your future, well beyond graduation.

They also will trust – and even depend on – you to help advance critical progress in their fields. As an undergrad at institutions where graduate students are first in line for research opportunities, you might get to watch from the sidelines, and maybe clean some test tubes. Here at Oberlin, you will work one-on-one with your professors to engage in cutting-edge research across all fields of study, and often even coauthor and present papers at academic conferences internationally.

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