Graduate Student funding

This page is intended to help you locate external funding for your graduate education.

A good place to start is with the Grants and Grantsmanship Library Guide at Dana Library, an excellent overview and guide to proposal development with lots of additional resources. Following that are the most common federal funders of graduate education, followed by a list of databases that you can access at no cost, and finally, some resources to assist you with the craft of writing a grant proposal. If you have questions, please contact Joe Broderick (or call 973-353-1533).

Good luck!

Federal

National Science Foundation

• • Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is the program page, with a link to the program announcement and a video describing the program and application process
  • Other NSF Special Programs for Graduate Students

National Institutes of Health

• • Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award – F31
  • Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research (Parent F31 – Diversity)
  • Ruth L. Kirschstein Individual Predoctoral NRSA for MD/PhD and other Dual Degree Fellowships

Other federal

• • U.S. Department of Energy: Computational Science Graduate Fellowship
  • National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship

Free Access Databases at Rutgers

• Pivot is a comprehensive award database available at no cost to Rutgers faculty, students, and staff that can be customized based on research interests, type of sponsor, type of award, and many other criteria. An easy to use “How-to” guide is available here.
• GradFund, a database of funding opportunities funded and maintained by the School of Graduate Studies, Rutgers – New Brunswick that has been opened to Rutgers – Newark students
• Foundation Directory Online provides information on over 100,000 private funders, includes a searchable database of recent awards and allows users to sign up to receive email alerts.

PhDs.me website

The website phds.me has a very well-organized, comprehensive overview of funding for graduate students, including The PhD Student’s Guide to Fellowships, which has links to  funding opportunities data at universities, private funders, and federal agencies and also provides an overview of the types of fellowships and how-to guides for preparing a fellowship application. Also see their listing of Scholarships & Grants for Doctoral Students.

The following databases are maintained by other institutions but are publicly searchable:

• Duke University
• Georgetown University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
• Harvard University
• UCLA Graduate and Postdoctoral Extramural Support (GRAPES) Database
• University of Illinois Database of Grants and Fellowships for Graduate Students
• NIH – Fogarty Center Non-NIH funding for predoctoral and graduate researchers
• H-Net— humanities and social sciences opportunities
• Institute for Broadening Participation Funding and other resources for graduate students

Grantwriting assistance

• Grant-writing guides
• GrantSpace.  A portal to free information available from the Foundation Center sorted by subjects, skills, classroom, tools, blog.
• Harvard University, The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Scholarly Pursuits: A Guide to Professional Development during the Graduate Years.

Please send comments and suggestions to Joe Broderick.