Deadline for the Spring 2013 program is January 15, 2013, 11:59PM EST.

• Program Description
• Applicant Eligibility Requirements
• Application Process
• Important Dates

Program Description

The LDC Data Scholarship program provides college and university students with access to LDC data at no-cost. Each year LDC distributes thousands of dollars worth of data at no or reduced cost to students who demonstrate need for data yet cannot secure funding. LDC members and data users have subsidized these data distributions through their support of the Consortium. The LDC Data Scholarship program formalizes this practice.

Data scholarships are offered twice a year to correspond to the Fall and Spring semesters. Several students can be awarded scholarships during each program cycle. Students need to complete an application, information for which is provided below. The selection process is highly competitive.

Applicant Eligibility Requirements

This program is open to students pursuing both undergraduate and graduate studies in an accredited college or university. LDC Data Scholarships are not restricted to any particular field of study, however, students must demonstrate a well-developed research agenda and a bona fide inability to pay.

Application Process

The application consists of two parts:

(1) Data Use Proposal. Applicants must submit a proposal describing their intended use of the data. The proposal must contain the following:

• the database requested.
• a description of the research project.
• a clear indication of why the data is needed for the research project and how it will be used.

Students should consult the LDC Corpus Catalog for a complete list of data distributed by LDC. Due to certain restrictions, a handful of LDC corpora are available to Consortium members only. Applicants are advised to select a maximum of one to two datasets; students may apply for additional datasets during a subsequent cycle once they have completed processing the initial dataset and have published or presented work in some juried venue.

Proposals should be a maximum of two pages, 12 pt font, double-spaced.

(2) Letter of Support. Applicants must submit one letter of support from their thesis advisor or department chair. The letter must verify the student's need for data and confirm that the department or university lacks the funding to pay the full Non-member Fee for the data or to join the consortium.

The letter of support should:

• describe student: student name, university name, field of study, etc. The letter should elaborate on the type and duration of relationship with the student.
• describe research: LDC data to be used as well as a description of the student's research. The letter should evaluate the probability of success of the student's research.
• describe need: elaborate on funding situation of department and comment on the lack of funds.

LDC will reject applications which:

• contain a Data Use Proposal or Letter of Support that does not meet the requirements stated above.
• are incomplete - are either missing a Data Use Proposal or Letter of Support.
• are received after the submission deadline.

Submission materials will not be returned. All submissions are property of LDC and its members.

LDC Data Scholarship recipients will be notified by email and will be announced publicly. Awardees will be asked to sign an additional user license agreement(s) which governs use of LDC data. For a list of user license agreements, please see our License Agreements page. Data scholarship recipients will be asked to correctly cite corpus awarded in any scholarly paper.

Students can email their applications to the LDC Data Scholarship program. Decisions will be sent by email from the same address.

Important Dates

For the Spring 2013 semester:

• Submission Deadline: January 15, 2013, 11:59PM EST.


• Winner Notification: rolling, but no later than February 15, 2013.