Getting external funding as a graduate student, especially a nationally recognized fellowship or grant, can launch a career. It can provide financial security (as they usually pay more than university assistantships), comfortable funding for dissertation research, extra money for conference and research travel, as well as prestige among graduate peers and faculty. External grants and fellowships also can make life as a graduate student much easier since external fellowships often come WITHOUT work demands and often allows for greater student autonomy.
Indeed, receiving an external grant or fellowship–especially at a national level–can be a life-altering event for graduate students.
Which means that learning how to write external grants and fellowships is one of the most important skills to develop as a graduate student. Even if you aren’t successful with grant applications, learning the process of grant writing provides excellent practice for later career grant writing as a post-doctoral fellow or tenure-track professor. Summer months are an ideal time to hone your grant writing skills. Not only do most graduate students have more free time during the summer, but summer grant writing also launches fall and spring applications when life becomes much busier.
So where should you begin?
1.Start big. Check around your field (I would start with your national conference organization) and see what major national grants/fellowships are recommended. For example, in my field of history, the American Historical Association has a web page for graduate student funding and grant writing. It contains a calendar with dates of funding and conference opportunities. You can also check out the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Science Foundation awards for graduate students. The National Science Foundation website will point STEM students to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This is one of the best fellowships available for STEM graduate students. It is due in October, and recipients receive cushy stipends for three years, research autonomy, and freedom from working.
2. Research grant sites. I recommend applying for several grants and fellowships. This not only provides valuable practice, but it increases your chances of receiving one. find some good sites that list multiple grant and fellowship options. One of the best ones is a site maintained by UCLA–the Graduate and Postdoctoral Extramural Support (GRAPES) database. You can type your field into the search filter and receive a very good listing of potential funding sources. It is useful for both STEM and Humanities students. Often national organizations host field-specific databases for external funding, such as the American Psychological Association site.
3. Ask your advisor or graduate faculty. Many of the faculty you currently work with held external funding as graduate students. Ask them for their advice. Ask to read their proposals. Ask them if they will read your proposals.
4. Get started now. Aim to write 2-3 grant applications every summer. Remember, getting one grant or fellowship can improve your odds of getting a second one, and so forth. Yes, you may be fully funded with an assistantship, but getting a grant or fellowship will make your good life even better. It can even help you get a job in the future. So keep trying!
Seriously, applying for an external grant or fellowship as a graduate student can be one of the smartest moves you ever make. This is the best time to figure out how to do it, so get started!!