Every single year, thousands of students end up on dead scholarship pages because they think the buick achievers scholarship program application is still open for business. High school counselor sites, dusty old PDFs, and outdated forum threads keep showing up on Google. Most of these pages are left over from 2013, 2016, or maybe 2019. It sucks to waste your time chasing a great financial aid opportunity only to find out the link died years ago.
Let’s be completely real about this from the start.
If you are out here looking for the official buick achievers scholarship program application, you need to know exactly what happened to this fund, how the whole process used to work, who actually won it, and where you should be putting your energy instead right now in 2026.
Was the Buick Achievers Scholarship Program Discontinued?
The short answer is that nobody at General Motors or the GM Foundation ever came out and said it’s dead forever. But at the same time, they haven’t said it’s coming back either.
Here is what we know for sure. The GM Foundation started this whole thing back in 2011. Over the years, they gave out a massive amount of money—more than $16.5 million to students across the country. Through most of the 2010s, it ran like clockwork. The application portal would open up in January, close down by late February, and they would announce the winners in the spring.
The last time anyone actually completed a confirmed application cycle was February 2023.
Since that closed, everything has gone quiet. The main website stopped working as a live portal. The GM Foundation hasn’t dropped any news about restarting it, but they haven’t completely wiped it from their history either.
The real annoying part is that hundreds of old pages from school districts and random college financial aid boards never got taken down. They still show deadlines from 2014 or 2022 like they are current.
Don’t get fooled. As of May 2026, there is no open application. Before you spend hours looking for a hidden registration link, check the actual GM corporate site directly. Don’t trust an old high school PDF that hasn’t been updated in three years.
Who Was Eligible for the Buick Achievers Scholarship Program?
When this program was up and running, the rules stayed pretty much the same every year. They looked for a very specific type of student.
First, you had to be a high school senior, a recent graduate, or a current undergraduate student who planned to go full-time to a four-year accredited college or university. This was only for people in the US and Puerto Rico. If you went to school part-time or were heading to grad school, you couldn’t get it.
Your major was a huge deal here. Most of the people who won were going into engineering tracks like mechanical, electrical, computer, or industrial. Computer science and tech degrees counted too. They also accepted industrial design and business majors if you could prove you were focusing strictly on the automotive industry. If your major didn’t connect back to STEM or cars, you had zero chance.
But Buick Achievers did things a bit differently than other big corporate scholarships.
They didn’t just look at perfect grades. They put a ton of weight on your community work, how you showed leadership outside the classroom, and your financial situation. The scholarship was built to help kids who actually couldn’t afford college without the cash. It wasn’t just for the student with a perfect GPA from a rich school district. That made the competition a lot more fair, and honestly, a lot more meaningful.
To win, you needed decent grades mixed with real volunteer work and a genuine need for financial support.
How the Buick Achievers Scholarship Application Process Worked
Back when you could apply, the whole thing required some real planning. You couldn’t just throw a quick resume together and hit send.
Step one was making an account on the official Buick Achievers portal. If you got confused and tried to apply through a random third-party site, you’d miss the real form entirely.
Once you got inside, you had to upload a bunch of different things.
You needed your official school transcripts. Then you had to write a solid personal essay about your life goals and why you cared about STEM or cars. They wanted a detailed list of your extracurricular stuff and community service hours. You also needed letters of recommendation from teachers or counselors. The people grading these applications looked closely to see if you actually led projects or if you just signed up for clubs to look good on paper.
Money was a big factor here. They checked your financial need directly, and they always liked it if you had your FAFSA ready to go. This wasn’t a scholarship where they looked at your family’s finances as an afterthought.
The timeline was always tight. The portal opened in January and shut down in late February, with results coming out in the spring. Winners could get up to $25,000 every year, and it was renewable. If you kept your grades up and stayed in a qualifying STEM major, you could keep getting that money for multiple years. That made all the paperwork completely worth it.
Because it was so much cash, the competition was brutal. The essay and your real-world volunteer work were usually the things that separated the winners from the rest of the pack.
Past Buick Achievers Scholarship Application Cycles (2018–2021)
If you are looking back at old data to see if the rules changed over time, they really didn’t. The committee stuck to their main plan.
The 2018 cycle ran on the usual schedule. People signed up in January, turned everything in by February, and engineering students took home most of the cash. By 2019, word had spread everywhere through high school counselor networks, so the number of people applying went through the roof.
In 2020 and 2021, everything kept moving right along through the same website. The rules didn’t change, the majors stayed the same, and they still focused heavily on financial need. Old winners got their money renewed, and new students went through the exact same essay process.
After 2021, the updates from the company started to slow down, which eventually led to the final quiet closing after the 2023 deadline.
Scholarships Similar to Buick Achievers in 2026
Honestly, instead of sitting around hoping this specific fund reopens, you are much better off looking at STEM scholarships that are active right now. There are some great options open for applications today.
If you love cars and mechanical design, check out SAE International. They run solid scholarship programs made specifically for future engineers and automotive students. You can see what they have open on the SAE International Scholarships page. The ASME Foundation is another great one for mechanical engineering students, and you can check their open windows on the ASME Scholarships portal.
General Motors also still helps out with school funding, but they do it through partner schools and specific minority education funds now. You can see how they hand out that money by going to the GM Corporate Education site.
Here are a few other big programs you should look at this year:
- The Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society: Great funding options for engineering undergrads who excel in their classes.
- The Barry Goldwater Scholarship: This is one of the top undergraduate STEM awards you can get in the US.
- The Gates Scholarship: A highly competitive full-ride award for minority students who show great leadership and need financial help.
- Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation: A massive award for high school seniors who balance good grades with heavy volunteer work.
- The Davidson Fellows Scholarship: This one gives money to students under 18 who have done serious, high-level independent projects in STEM.
If you are working on your academic background to make sure your applications look great to these reviewers, check out our guide on the Algebra Learning Nexus One to sharpen the math skills these boards look for. Also, if you want to look into local state aid that doesn’t rely on federal money, read our breakdown of the Virginia Education Improvement Scholarships to see how state tax-credit programs can help you pay for your degree.
You can also use these popular directories to find more open STEM and engineering funds:
- Scholarships.com Engineering Directory
- Fastweb Engineering Awards
- College Board BigFuture Search
- Peterson’s Scholarship Finder
- Unigo STEM Scholarships
- Going Merry Student Aid
- Bold.org Engineering Board
- Niche Directory
- US Department of Energy STEM Fellowships
- NASA Internships and Fellowships
- IEEE Foundation Support
- AISES Indigenous STEM Awards
- Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF)
- United Negro College Fund (UNCF) STEM Programs
- Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Scholarships
- American Chemical Society (ACS) Scholars
- National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Funds
- AutoCare Association Foundation
- TechForce Foundation Technician Grants
- SkillsUSA Student Awards
- Automotive Hall of Fame Grants
- Official FAFSA Portal
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Buick Achievers Scholarship Program still active?
No, there is no application open for 2026. The last cycle closed back in February 2023. Keep an eye on the GM Foundation site to see if they ever decide to open it up again.
How much was the Buick Achievers scholarship worth?
It was worth up to $25,000 a year. Since it was renewable, you could get up to $100,000 over four years of college, which is way better than most one-time awards.
Who was allowed to apply?
High school seniors, recent grads, and undergraduate students in the US and Puerto Rico. You just had to be registered full-time at a four-year college.
What majors did you need to have?
It was strictly for engineering (like mechanical, electrical, computer, or industrial), technology tracks, industrial design, or business majors focused on the auto industry.
What month did the application start?
When it was running, the buick achievers scholarship program application would open up in early January and take entries until late February.
Could you get the money again the next year?
Yes. You didn’t have to reapply against everyone else from scratch. You just had to send in your transcripts to show you were keeping your grades up and staying in your STEM major.
What are some good alternatives I can apply for right now?
Take a look at the SAE International engineering grants, the ASME Foundation awards, the Gates Scholarship, or the technician funds over at the TechForce Foundation.
The Buick Achievers program did a ton of good for over ten years, helping a lot of kids get into engineering and car-focused careers without sinking in debt. Whether it comes back or stays on pause, the things they looked for—real community work, financial need, and a clear passion for STEM—are the exact same things other scholarship boards want to see today. Work on building up that profile, and start sending your applications to active programs right now.
