Do you know what fellowship or grants you will apply for this year and in the coming years? In this blog post we will look at how to choose what awards to apply for and when. If you are eligible for multiple awards and you are trying to decide what to apply for, prioritize your […]
Planning When to Apply
Planning When to Apply
Preparing for your GradFund Meeting
At Gradfund, all members of the Rutgers University graduate student community are invited to schedule a meeting to discuss funding options and have application drafts reviewed. To get the most out of your meeting with GradFund, please see the tips below for both meeting types: Planning and Application Review. Planning Meetings During planning meetings, you […]
Bird’s Eye View – A Timeline for Applying for Funding
Because research funding is cyclical, it’s good to be thinking in advance, often far in advance, about what your next funding move should be. This post is an overview of the funding process. Our blog has more in-depth discussions of many of these topics, so feel free to click through as you go along. Stage […]
Completion Fellowships: Understanding your Options
Completion fellowships provide doctoral students a year of financial support to finish writing their dissertation. These fellowships not only provide financial support for those whose funding packages may have run out by the time they start working on their dissertation, they also stamp a mark of prestige on your research and your promise as a […]
Fellowships, Grants, and Scholarships: Which Award Fits My Graduate Program?
Merit-based awards for graduate students typically fall into one of three categories: Fellowships, grants, and scholarships. Each type of award supports graduate study in a different way, and each is tailored toward a specific type of graduate program. Knowing which type of award is a good fit for your program is an important first-step toward […]
Time to Plan: The Spring Semester
The funding calendar of external grants and fellowships to support graduate study has a distinct rhythm that we at GradFund know well: Small grants, scholarships, and pre-dissertation research grants have a concentration of deadlines during the early spring semester, but are broadly distributed throughout the academic year. Awards with large financial payoffs, such as early […]
What Will You Do When? The Art of Designing a Persuasive Timeline
Many fellowships and grants require either an informal or formal timeline to be included with your proposal. The best timelines are persuasive documents that give reviewers the sense that you have a good idea of how your research is going to proceed, and that the work you are proposing is feasible in the time you […]
Submitting an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) is one of the most applied-to early graduate study fellowships for students in STEM fields. The 2012 deadlines are 8 pm E.S.T. Nov. 13 through Nov. 19, depending on field of study (for more information, see http://www.nsfgrfp.org). Unlike most NSF programs, students applying to the NSF GRF program must […]
Predissertation Research Grants as a Foundation for Successful Dissertation Research
In the last few weeks, our blog posts have focused on the early stages of graduate study, including early graduate study fellowships and general advice for planning award applications long-term. Today, to round out this picture of the first few years of a graduate student’s external, merit-based funding perspective, we’d like to discuss pre-dissertation research […]
External Funding Tips for Early Graduate Study
The first month (or even year) of graduate school can be both exciting and overwhelming. Looking back, for me that time was a blur of new faces, new places, and new ideas, all rushing past at NJ Turnpike speeds. The idea of tackling the process of applying for grants and fellowships in the midst of […]