Today’s Featured Funder, Point Foundation, is a unique scholarship organization for “out” lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ) students. Awardees receive funding for up to five years of educational expenses and also participate in mentoring relationships, networking opportunities, and leadership training. In return, recipients commit to carrying out a community service project every year […]
Welcome to the GradFund Blog
Welcome to the GradFund Blog
Featured Funder: The Leopold Schepp Foundation
Trying to fund a master’s degree or PhD coursework? The Leopold Schepp Foundation offers need-based financial support for graduate students (and undergrads too) who demonstrate exemplary character, strong academic ability, and financial need. Graduate students must be US citizens or permanent residents, under the age of 40, and currently taking courses. PhD students who are […]
Show, Don’t Tell
“Show, don’t tell” is a pretty common saying here at GradFund. But what exactly do we mean by this, and how can it help you write a competitive application? Typically, grant applications consist of more than a research design. Funders want to know who they’re funding, not just what they’re funding. Describing the type of scholar […]
Good Writing Happens in Good Company: Three Benefits of Peer Feedback
Image credit: Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash Ever hear of “Lonely Writer Syndrome?” It’s the clinical-sounding term that Writer’s Digest uses to describe the isolation that writers can feel as they toil away by themselves in front of their laptops. But writing does not necessarily have to be a solitary activity. As students who participate in multi-author research can attest, writing can be a highly interactive process, with team members trading drafts back and forth. For those of us […]
Incorporating Parenting Experiences into Your Personal Statement
This is the third post in a series on navigating the world of external funding as a parent in graduate school. Can an experience as normal as parenting be incorporated into your personal statement? The answer is: it depends. On one hand, it might seem that there is nothing interesting about being a parent; it’s […]
Balancing Grad School, Parenting, and Grant Applications
This is the second post in a series on navigating the world of external funding as a parent in graduate school. Being a parent in graduate school brings with it a whole host of time-management challenges. Balancing coursework, research, teaching, and parenting can be overwhelming. And throwing grant applications into the mix might seem impossible. […]
Parents: Here’s Why You Should Make Time to Apply for External Funding
This is the first post of a series on navigating the world of external funding as a parent in graduate school. Students with children undoubtedly face a unique set of challenges and time constraints in graduate school. As graduate students, we’re taking courses; studying for exams; grading exams; teaching classes; conducting, presenting, and publishing our […]
Bringing Your Previous Research Experience into Your Current Application
Many of us have had several research experiences prior to graduate school. These experiences may have been within or outside of the discipline in which we have chosen to pursue our dissertation research. For some lucky few, all of these research experiences connect to one another and center around a clear research focus and trajectory. […]
What to Expect: Application Review Meeting
I’ve had this experience often: At the end of an exhaustive meeting with a fellowship applicant—after we’ve gone over specific points of structure and tone in minute detail; after we’ve reviewed broader issues of purpose and audience; after we’ve discussed background information on the funder who’s sponsoring the fellowship— the applicant says, with a certain […]
Unpacking Jargon—Part Two
Part One of this post described reasons to limit jargon in your proposal, and two strategies to help you minimize your use of jargon. Part Two offers more specific advice for addressing jargon in your writing. Define for yourself each term you or your readers have identified as jargon. You may discover that some of […]