Fellowships

Students accepted to the BMI program receive full stipend support ($24,500 in 2004-05) plus payment of tuition and fees through completion of all degree requirements. However, at UCSF we encourage all students applying to our PhD programs to also apply for external predoctoral fellowships such as the NSF, the National Defense Science and Engineering fellowship, and Hertz while still an undergraduate.

Why is it valuable to be awarded a fellowship? It demonstrates your ability to generate a scientific idea and present it plausibly, something you will be called on to do throughout your career. Most importantly, it is an early mark of success - something that improves your odds for future fellowships and professional recognition. In addition, it rewards you with salary support augmented by an educational allowance for things such as books and computers. Occasionally, having your own source of support allows greater freedom in your choice of laboratory after your first year.

Why apply now? There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is practical. You are writing your essays and gathering letters of recommendation for grad school. Gearing one of these sets to a fellowship when you are a senior in college may save you time and effort in grad school, when you will most certainly be asked to apply. Even more important is that your recommenders probably know you very well, especially in relationship to your research experience. By contrast, when you apply in the early fall as a first year grad student, it may be a challenge to find more than one or two faculty members know you well enough to write a thoughtful letter. You require four letters, so that means you would need to collect letters from two sites (grad school and undergrad). This adds another dimension of effort since you will need to reacquaint your college recommender with your current situation. As a senior, your proposal will be informed by your research experience to that point; as a grad student your proposal is based on what you are in the very earliest stages of knowing and in that sense might be harder to write about persuasively.

If you apply and are not selected, then you are free to reapply in your first year at grad school, with greater experience and perhaps some useful feedback from the agency that turned you down in your senior year. Lack of fellowship support is not a factor in grad school selection: our choices are made long before such information is publicly announced. When an applicant is right for a program, he or she is admitted with enthusiasm regardless of external support.