Financing Your Graduate Education
Fellowships or Grants
The primary source of funding for graduate students is usually through fellowships or grants. Fellowships are similar to scholarships that you may have received as an undergraduate; with the exception that, unlike undergraduate scholarships, the majority of graduate students receive fellowship support at various times during their graduate student career. Fellowships are awards or grants that you do not have to pay back and are intended to attract highly qualified students to graduate programs. Fellowships can be either institutional (i.e., offered by a UCI department for study at UCI) or "portable" (i.e., offered by an external organization or agency for study at UCI).
The student's home academic department is responsible for making institutional UCI fellowship awards. Applicants interested in fellowships/graduate support should indicate so on their application when applying for admission. Applications should be completed and all supporting materials submitted by January 15 to receive full consideration for student financial support. To learn more about support, visit the web sites of the academic departments in which you are interested. UCI also actively recruits students from populations underrepresented in our student body via special diversity fellowship programs.
Both prospective and current students are strongly encouraged to apply to portable fellowship programs. These external awards attract applicants from across the country and are competitive. To assist you in this process, UCI provides various search resources, some of which may require a UCI logon.
Academic departments at UCI (as well as external agencies), through fellowship awards, may provide payment of university fees, tuition, and/or a stipend for living expenses. Some agencies, as well as UCI, usually provide for a certain number of years of financial support for the most promising graduate students. This support may be provided as fellowships or through other forms of financial support. While most fellowships are based solely on academic merit, some fellowship awards are intended for certain people, like children of veterans or people in a certain field of study.
