Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships Blog

The application for the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowships is now open. NDSEG is sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD) and was created to increasing the number of U.S. citizens and nationals trained in science and engineering disciplines of military importance. To be eligible “applicants much be enrolled in their final year of undergraduate studies, or have completed no more than the equivalent of one year of academic full-time graduate study as a part-time or full-time student.” Eligible disciplines include Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Biosciences, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Cognitive, Neural, and Behavioral Sciences, Computer and Computational Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Geosciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Oceanography and Physics.

The DoD pays fellow’s full tuition and required fees. Fellows also receive a stipend which increases during the second year of a fellows tenure. The first year fellows receive a 30,500 stipend award. Second and third year fellows receive 31,500.

For more on this award please review the NDSEG website.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recently opened in August and applicants are probably looking for advice on how to put together a winning application. NSF does not release sample applications “in order to preserve the originality of the application pool”, but successful applications do share some common threads. With some persistent searching applicants can find lots of good advice on the internet. Jean Yang, an NSF fellow in 2007 provides potential applicants information on applying for fellowships and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship via her blog: updated sporadically at best.

NSF. For the NSF fellowship, you are required to write a personal statement, a statement of research experience, and a research proposal for a project you would pursue in graduate school. I was given the very helpful advice that I should make my essays clear and concise, as the readers would likely to be skimming. My materials are below:

* Personal statement – I write about my life goals as they are relevant to my graduate pursuits and how I came to develop them.
* Research experience – this was fairly straight forward. One helpful editor told me to provide enough background for understanding each research experience.
* Proposed research – I described my undergraduate senior thesis. The project does not necessarily have to be a project you for sure plan to pursue in graduate school; you just need to show that you have thought about a large-scale project, the reasons for pursuing it, and what impact it may have. One good piece of advice I got was to make the problem as clear as possible as early as possible.

Past GRFP review panelists offer their advice for putting together a competitive application as well. Applicants may also benefit from the new GRFP website.

John Gamble, a 2008 graduate of Wooster College, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship, plans to use his grant to study physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Gamble was a physics and mathematics double major at Wooster College in Ohio, where he had a 3.97 GPA, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa after his junior year. He edited and directed making a video, “Theoretical Football”, which won the People’s Choice Award at the American Physical Society’s Nanobowl Video Contest

His impressive academic record and his commitment to the Physics Club’s outreach program, which brings physics demonstrations to elementary schools, were significant factors in his selection for the fellowship, according to an article on Wooster’s website.

Like his father, he plans to be a college professor after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, as he is self-described as an “academic,” who “Loves to tackle interesting problems just for the sake of knowledge, and would really enjoy teaching at the college level.”

Related Links:
Hadiyah Green Discusses Her National Science Foundation Fellowship
NSF Fellow: Joshua Atwood
NSF Fellow: Lindsay Yee

The application for the 2009 National Science Foundation’s (NSF) East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) program is now open and will close on December 9, 2008. EAPSI provides graduate students in the science and engineering fields first-hand research experience in Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, or Taiwan. All institutes last approximately 8 weeks from June to August, except for Japan’s, which lasts 10 weeks. Benefits include a $5,000 stipend, support to attend a pre-departure orientation in the Washington, D.C. area, in-country living expenses, a round-trip air ticket, and an introduction to the location’s culture. All U.S. citizens, nationals, and permanent residents enrolled in a graduate program seeking research-based Master’s and/or PhD degrees in NSF-supported science (including social science and psychology) and engineering disciplines are eligible to apply. Interested applicants are encouraged to visit www.nsfsi.org or www.nsf.gov/eapsi for more information.

The 2009 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship is now open to applicants. Intended for undergraduate students studying mathematics, science, and engineering, and named for the former senator, soldier, and presidential candidate, the program plans to award as many as 300 scholarships, and is funded by the interest from the Department of the Treasury’s trust fund.

The program will award a maximum of $7,500 annually to cover expenses for tuition, fees, books, and room and board. The awards will be divided among rising juniors and rising seniors, the former being eligible for two years of support, the latter for one year. In order to be considered eligible, a student must be a US Citizen or permanent resident, be a full-time matriculated sophomore or junior pursuing a degree at an accredited college or university during the 2008–2009 academic year, have a college grade-point average of at least “B”, and be in the upper fourth of his or her class. For those who do not meet the requirements, ASEE has a list of other opportunities available on its Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships blog.

Related: 2009 SMART Scholarship 2009 NASA Aeronautics Scholarship Program The IGERT Program

The NASA Aeronautics Scholarship Program, a scholarship program for both undergraduate and graduate students, is open for applications. The program is for students focusing on aeronautical research and related degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The undergraduate scholarship allocates up to $15,000 awarded for each school year, to be used for tuition and other school-related costs, not to include room and board, while the graduate scholarship allocates up to $35,000 awarded for each school year, to be used for tuition and other school-related costs. Both scholarships also include summer internships (limited to two for graduate students) with stipend in an amount up to $10,000. The application is now open.