I don’t know about the Poli Sci department.
Generally, departmental scholarships for freshmen are extremely rare. My son did receive them, but they are so rare that we had an extremely difficult time finding out from anyone about whether they qualified as “competitive” for the $4k needed to receive the OOS tuition waiver. So rare that at the “resource fair” for OOS students that we were at, when I showed them to the financial aid person there they were completely clueless and surprised to see anyone that had them.
My son received an email about them in February of that year, if i recall correctly. We had to make a giant leap of faith that they would count for the $$ needed for the OOS waiver and he signed up for orientation on April 29th that year. The scholarships and the OOS waiver didn’t show up in his portal until August. Our experience since has been that departmental scholarships are awarded in his department in July of each year. If lucky enough, to keep the OOS waiver you then have to earn new scholarships every year.
Good luck!