If you are interested in attending Psychedelic Science 2025, but cannot afford the standard rates, please read this entire page to learn more about the scholarship registration program.
The primary scholarship application window is currently open, and closes on Friday, December 13, 2024 at 11:59pm EST.
Please note that scholarships cover the cost of registration only, and do not include travel or lodging support.
Please read the entire FAQ below to learn if you are eligible, and before submitting your application.
Scholarship FAQ
You can see the conference’s standard registration rates at psychedelicscience.org/register.
These prices fairly reflect the cost of producing an event this large and complex at a professional level of quality, and are consistent with the cost of similar conferences. Rates increase seasonally over the year leading up to the conference.
If you are able to afford the Community level registration rates, we ask that you simply pay for registration and leave scholarships for those who truly need the support.
MAPS is committed to creating an equitable psychedelic ecosystem where everyone has opportunities to participate and contribute.
Psychedelic Science is the largest conference devoted to psychedelics in the world, and we want to ensure that present and future movement leaders who may not have economic comfort are still able to attend.
In particular, we’d like to ensure that people from communities that have historically not been included or well-represented in this field and its conferences are supported.
Scholarships are granted to a wide variety of applicants. We encourage everyone who is eligible to apply.
Anyone 18 years or older who wants to attend but sincerely cannot afford our standard rates is welcome to apply for a scholarship.
Applications are open to everyone, not just students or academic professionals.
There are no costs to apply or professional prerequisites.
Anyone who could afford the standard rates is ineligible to apply for or receive a scholarship.
The scholarship program is intended to be a form of charitable support for those who simply cannot otherwise attend.
Scholarships are not intended to be a general discount program or an “apply and see what happens” opportunity.
We encourage everyone who is eligible to apply.
We are proud to host the largest scholarship program in the psychedelic community. However, due to the hard costs associated with attendance levels at our venue, there is a limit to how many scholarships we can grant.
At Psychedelic Science 2023, we received over 4,000 applications for 1,000 scholarship slots, yielding a 25% approval rate. We expect to receive similar or greater levels of applications for PS2025.
First, please read this entire FAQ to ensure that you are eligible and that your application will receive the best consideration possible.
Next, write your personal statement, which could take anywhere from 15-60 minutes.
Then, fill out the application form itself before Friday, December 13, 2024 at 11:59pm EST.
Scholarship applications are reviewed en masse after the application.
You will receive a response via email by Friday, January 17, 2025 at 5:00pm EST.
If approved, you will still need to register and fill out the pre-event survey by the requested deadline in order to attend. (If you do not register and fill out the pre-event survey by the deadline, your registration will be forfeited.)
There will be a secondary, smaller application window in Q1 2025, but we recommend that everyone who is interested apply during the primary window in Q4 2024.
All scholarship recipients receive a 3-day Community registration for the conference on Wednesday, June 18 - Friday, June 20, 2025.
The Community registration tier includes access to all educational track sessions, the Expo Hall, the Deep Space immersive creative environment, and other general conference areas.
In addition, a limited number of scholarship recipients may receive the ability to attend workshops on Monday, June 16 and Tuesday, June 17, 2025.
Please note that registration add-ons such as meals, CE/CME, workshops, and other features may incur additional costs to be borne by the scholarship recipients.
Also, please note that scholarships are for registration only, and do not include travel and lodging support.
Finally, scholarship registrations are for the approved recipient only, require photo ID to pick up badges, and are non-transferable to other attendees.
The most important part of the application is the personal statement.
We recommend spending at least 15m and up to 60m writing this in a separate document, and then pasting it into the application form.
Other than the personal statement, the application is a simple list of biographical questions to learn more about you and your interests.
Please do not be discouraged if many of the questions do not seem to apply to you. Scholarships are awarded to all kinds of applicants. There are no “right answers.”
Also, please note that some of the questions are simply there to help us better understand the communities that we are reaching, or for reporting to donors, rather than decision-making criteria.
The prompt for the personal statement is, “Where did your interest in psychedelics originate, why is attending the conference important to you, and what do you hope to do with the knowledge and network you might gain there?”
The statement should be 250 - 500 words, which is about half a page to a full page.
Please do not include more than 500 words, as our reviewers have limited time for each application and will not be able to read more than one page.
We recommend typing out your statement in a separate document, and pasting it into the form.
You will receive a response via email by Friday, January 17, 2025 at 5:00pm EST.
Please be sure to keep track of the email address you used in the application.
Also, please be sure that scholarships@psychedelicscience.org emails will reach you. If our messages to you are getting stuck in your spam folder, we have no way of reaching you.
If you receive an approval notification, you will need to complete the registration process using a provided scholarship code within two weeks.
Additionally, in May, all scholarship recipients will be required to fill out a pre-event survey.
This survey both helps us learn more about the interests of the scholarship community, and also serves to confirm that recipients will actually attend.
Unfortunately, because scholarships are offered gratis, some people treat them as “options” and do not cancel them if their plans change and they cannot attend.
Since the total number of scholarships is limited and demand exceeds availability, every no-show effectively deprives another person of attending the conference.
For this reason, no-show recipients will be barred from participating in the scholarship or volunteer programs of future conferences.
If you hold a scholarship registration, but due to unforeseen circumstances cannot attend, please notify us ASAP so that we can offer your scholarship seat to another applicant.
(Please note that scholarship registrations are non-transferable to other attendees and require photo ID to claim, so recipients cannot offer them to others to claim.)
The personally identifiable information in scholarship applications is confidential and is not used for any other purpose. It is not sold or shared with third parties. (See the conference’s complete privacy policy if you would like to learn more.)
Application reviewers will not have access to the names and email addresses of applicants, so they will be unaware of the identity of the person they are evaluating.
Reports about the scholarship program with summaries, aggregate data and statistics, and anonymized excerpts from personal statements may be published, but will not contain any personal data.
If your question is not answered in the above FAQ, you can write to info@psychedelicscience.org with general questions about the conference and scholarship program.
Please note that we are unable to review or advise on individual application responses or personal statements.
In order to demonstrate that you read these details, please enter the following phrase when prompted in the scholarship application:
I read to the very end.
