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The application for the 2025 Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is now closed.

Applicants will be contacted by email in January with notification of the status of their application following the initial review process.

You can review your application here.

The CLS Program provides opportunities for American college and university students to study languages and cultures essential to America's engagement with the world.

Each summer, American undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities across the country, spend eight to ten weeks learning one of a dozen languages at an intensive study abroad institute. The CLS Program is designed to promote rapid language gains and essential intercultural fluency in regions that are critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity.

CLS Spark, an initiative of the CLS Program, provides opportunities for American undergraduate college and university students to study Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Russian virtually at the beginning level.

Designed to leverage best practices in online language learning, CLS Spark provides students with the opportunity to study critical languages virtually when they may not have access to studying these languages on their campuses.

What Alumni Say About the CLS Program

Key Benefits

Develop Key Expertise

The CLS Program provides its scholars intensive language and cultural instruction in an environment designed to maximize their language gains at every level.

Career Ready Skills

Alumni apply their critical language skills in a variety of professional fields in public and private sectors as well as government, helping to support America’s competitiveness across the board.

Citizen Diplomacy

CLS scholars represent the breadth and diversity of the United States. Through personal engagement they help to spread American values and develop mutual understanding with the people of other countries.

CLS News and Stories

2025 Alumni Ambassador Application Now Open!

Are you interested in sharing your experience while supporting and promoting the CLS Program? The application to become a 2025 CLS Alumni Ambassador is now open! Apply here by 11:59 pm EST on Monday, January 6. Who are CLS Alumni Ambassadors? Alumni Ambassadors are select alumni from the 2024 CLS…

December 19, 2024

CLS in the Press

Spartan Showcase: Margaux Johnstone

This summer, Margaux Johnstone found herself reciting poetry in Urdu to a rickshaw driver while in Lucknow, India.

Shared from the daily, December 10, 2024

Meet Nava Berwick ’27

Berwick embraces other cultures through her Japanese major and performing classical Indonesian dances.

Shared from The Columns, December 03, 2024