The project I proposed during GradFund’s Summer Mentoring Program in 2009 is not exactly the dissertation I’ll be defending this summer, but it— and the work I continued to do with GradFund over the next six years— shaped that dissertation and the course of my graduate career. Even as one of the few incoming grad […]
Welcome to the GradFund Blog
Welcome to the GradFund Blog
Applying for Grants and Fellowships as an International Student – Part One
It would not be wrong to say that my introduction to the world of external funding happened when I started my doctoral program in Anthropology at Rutgers. As an international student coming from a country that has very limited external grant and fellowship options for study and research in higher education, I was both excited […]
Describing a Research Project Before You Have One
A common requirement for grant applications is that you describe your project. It’s a reasonable request for the people offering you money to want to know what you’ll do with it. However, a lot of us enter graduate school without knowing what we’re going to study while we’re here. Particularly in the lab sciences, many […]
How to Write a 500-Word Application
Often funders will set low word count limits for essay within grant or fellowship applications. It eases the organization’s review process, but puts applicants in a bind. How do you sum up potentially years of complex field specific data into a clear and concise 500-word essay? My points below are drawn from my experience with the Hall Rothman […]
Keeping Your Reviewer in Mind: Merging the Worlds of the Unfamiliar with the Familiar
As graduate students, we like to stay in our cozy, academic silos. Why? Because there, we are free to use our jargon with ease, our colleagues will likely be familiar with our theoretical frameworks, and our research methods are generally accepted. But what happens when we must venture out into the world of funding agencies, where […]
GradFund: What to Expect When You Meet with Us
So you have the idea to meet with GradFund. Mayhap your advisor suggested meeting with us to “discuss your options.” You could have come across one of our various emails. It’s possible that your program requires you to participate in one of our summer mentorship programs. Or maybe you just heard from a friend or […]
Meet Our Ford Fellows: Carolyn Ureña
Series Note: This year, three Rutgers graduate students have been awarded the prestigious Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for 2016-2017. Read on to learn more about Carolyn Ureña’s research, commitment to diversity, and her thoughts on working as a Fellowship Advisor at GradFund. A Fellowship Advisor’s Perspective As a graduate student I started taking advantage of […]
Meet Our Ford Fellows: Rosemary Ndubuizu
Series Note: This year, three Rutgers graduate students have been awarded the prestigious Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for 2016-2017. Read on to learn more about Rosemary Ndubuizu’s research, her thoughts on diversity, as well as her thoughts on community. Hi! My name is Rosemary Ndubuizu. I am a sixth year PhD candidate in Women’s […]
Proposal Writing 101 (Throwback Thursday)
Series note: The following post is part of the GradFund Throwback Thursday blog series. From time to time, we will repost one of our most popular blog posts from years past. If you are interested in learning more about research grants and fellowships to support your graduate study, be sure to visit the GradFund Knowledgebase. At a basic […]
Meet Our Ford Fellows: Dara Walker
Series Note: This year, three Rutgers graduate students have been awarded the prestigious Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for 2016-2017. Read on to learn more about Dara Walker’s research, commitment to diversity, and her thoughts on working with GradFund. As a native of Washington, D.C., I attended a public high school just five blocks away from […]