PhD Grants and Scholarships

When you choose to enroll in a PhD program and make that commitment to five years or more of additional schooling, you may be in for a pleasant financial surprise.  Many universities keep their PhD programs relatively small (and to some degree, elite) because their goal is to turn out the finest new researchers and academicians possible.  Their acceptance standards are high, but the financial support for PhD candidates who have been accepted often approaches 100%.  The school may pay for tuition, books and living expenses entirely of for a great percentage of those costs.  There are also usually teaching assistant or research assistant jobs available through the graduate school.

Here are some of the larger and more prominent graduate level scholarship opportunities:

1. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program provides a $30,000 annual stipend for three years along with $10,500 cost-of-education allowance.  It is available to students who are studying in the fields of science, math, engineering and other disciplines relevant to the work of the Foundation.
2. American Association of University Women (AAUW) has several scholarship programs, one of which is the Selected Professions Fellows.  This program was founded in 1970 to provide graduate level support to women studying in fields where traditionally they are underrepresented.  Eligible fields include architecture, computer and information sciences, mathematics, engineering and statistics.
3. Intel Corporation PhD Fellowship Program is available to students in the engineering and computer science fields.  Intel also supports a program in conjunction with the Semiconductor Research Corporation that provides scholarships to women and minorities in related PhD programs.  A similar program is co-sponsored by Intel and the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees.
4. IBM PhD Fellowship Awards are open to students in a remarkable number of academic fields : computer science & engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering, physical sciences (including chemistry, material sciences, and physics), mathematical sciences, business sciences (including financial services, communication, and knowledge), and service science, management, and engineering.
5. Cornell University Graduate School has a tremendous searchable database for graduate grants and scholarships.  You won’t find a better, more user friendly tool for digging out graduate school funding resources.  Sort by deadline, by award, by field and by keyword.
6. American Psychological Association has many graduate scholarship, fellowship and grant programs that they either underwrite as an organization or in partnership with another group.  The Dissertation Research Award, provided to students working on their PhD dissertation is but one example.  The APA also maintains a searchable database for scholarship and fellowship programs, not all of which are limited to psychology.
7. Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH) is a partner with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the ASPH/CDC Public Health Fellowship Program which is open to PhD candidates who have completed a master’s degree and to post-doc fellows interested in public health leadership opportunities within one of the many CDC agencies.  CDC also partners with other organizations on fellowships such as the American Society of Human Genetics.
8. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship Program is open to students pursuing  research in areas of physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, computational sciences, and environmental sciences.  The research and dissertations that follow must be relevant to the goals and activities of the Department of Energy, but their overriding goal is training the next generation of scientists in these fields.
9. Paul & Daisy Fellowships for New Americans are awarded to first generation Americans or recent immigrants who are in a master’s or doctoral program and who have demonstrated leadership, creativity and initiative.  Many applicants are medical students, but the two-year program allots a certain number of awards to a range of academic disciplines.
10. Spencer Foundation is a major charitable trust focused on education.  It has a Research Grants program and a Dissertation Fellows program, both of which have broad parameters in terms of academic discipline but that require a focus on education.