Funding Your Graduate Studies

So now that you’ve finished preparing your grad school applications, how are you going to fund your studies? One popular way of doing this is through fellowships! Fellowships are alternate funding sources sponsored by organizations and agencies that allow students to pursue their research and graduate studies.

Looking for fellowships to apply to? Here’s a list of some on my GitHub and fellowship portals from UCLA and ProFellow.

Maybe you’re tired from all of your graduate school applications and may not think that fellowships would be a great thing to pursue at this time. Why apply for fellowships? Fellowships allow you to focus solely on your research without the additional commitment of being a Teaching Assistant which can take around 15 hours a week (sometimes more). Some of them even come with equipment and professional development funding, which is helpful if you need to upgrade your computer from undergrad or travel to conferences!

Fortunately, many of the same resources that you used to prepare your graduate school applications can now be used to prepare your fellowship applications. Here are some things you need to apply to fellowships:

• List of fellowships you are applying to
• Personal and research statements
• List of potential recommenders

I’ve been fortunate to win a couple of fellowships and scholarships over the past few years and they have helped me immensely! One thing I benefited from when applying for fellowships is by being extremely organized. I contacted all of my recommenders a couple of months before with a chart detailing the names and deadlines of the fellowships I was applying to. I also sent my recommenders personal statements, research proposal drafts, and my CV to give them more context and to help them prepare the best recommendation letters they could write for me. Implementing some of these tips will definitely help you craft the best fellowship applications!

---

Be sure to catch up on my Grad School Series by reading my previous posts here. I would love for you to share this post and follow me on all social media platforms @CollegeSista! Have questions about applying to grad school, life as a graduate student, or Cornell in particular? Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn or through email!