Funding Your Graduate Education

Finding External Graduate Fellowships

External Graduate Fellowships are fellowships sponsored and funded by organizations outside the university. Corporations, charitable foundations, and numerous other groups fund graduate fellowships.

Private and Non-University Sponsored Fellowships. UMCP has several government and privately funded fellowships that are handled through the graduate programs and colleges. Some of these fellowships are won independently by students in national competitions; others are awarded directly to the colleges or programs, which then select student recipients. Students submitting applications for admission to graduate programs will be considered for such awards as appropriate; no additional application forms are required. Our graduate students are supported on fellowships from the Department of Defense, Ford Foundation, National Science Foundation, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, to name just a few. In addition, several graduate programs sponsor fellowship programs jointly with federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and the National Institute of Standards inTechnology.

Matching Tuition Scholarships for External Fellowships. These scholarships are awarded, subject to the availability of funding, to students who have received external fellowships that provide a stipend, but do not provide separate funds to cover the cost of tuition. The Graduate School policy on External Fellowship Tuition Remission is listed here.

If the external fellowship also provides an institutional allowance, this allowance will be used to pay the fellow's tuition. If the tuition cost is in excess of the institutional allowance amount, the University will pay the excess tuition amount. If the tuition is less than the amount of the institutional allowance and, if the policy of the institution that awards the external fellowship permits, any institutional allowance funds remaining after tuition has been paid will be given to the fellow as a supplement to his/her stipend.

Internet Resources

The Scholarship Webpage
National Scholarships Office
Community of Science
Financial Aid Information

Use a Web search engine (Dogpile, Excite, Google, iWon, Yahoo) to locate specific organizations and institutions that give funding to graduate students.
Contact fraternities, sororities, honor societies, or any other organization with which you are affiliated.

Publications

McKeldin Lirary Reference Section. All the guidebooks are gathered in one location. A good source with which to start is Peterson's Grants for Graduate and Postdoctoral Study (call number LB2337.2.P46).

Finding Graduate Assistantships

There are three types of assistantship positions on campus: Teaching Assistantships (TAs), Research Assistantships (RAs), and Adminstrative Assistantships (AAs). There are also a small number of positions available as Resident Life Counselors.* A graduate assistant must be a registered graduate student enrolled in a degree program at the University of Maryland, College Park.**

Finding an assistantship is, in many ways, equivalent to finding a job. Assistants are hired, paid, and supervised by the program or office that offers the appointment.

Start looking for your assistantship in the most familiar places. Most departments hire their own students as TAs, RAs, and AAs. Find out the criteria and application process in your department, and let them know that you want an assistantship. Ask your home department (chair or graduate director), your advisor, or other professors who know you, and the support staff (including other graduate assistants) in your department. Some assistantships are never publicized and are filled only through word-of-mouth.

Here are some postings of Assistantships available on campus:

Career Center
This is the site for TERP on-line, the Career Center's posting on the web of jobs. Follow the instructions for GUEST login if you have not registered with the Career Center. Once you have logged onto TERP, choose the following links:

• Show Job Listings
• Graduate/Teaching Assistantships

Personnel Services Department

This is the website for the Personnel Department of the University of Maryland. Here they post many listed assistantships.