Applying to Fellowships

At some point during your early years in the group, Professor Wasserman may encourage you to apply to some fellowships. These include (but are not limited to) the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO), National Defense Science and Engineering Fellowship (NDSEG), and the Hertz Fellowship. The following page includes some helpful tips for applying.

General Advice

• Start early! Do not save these to the last minute. Many of these fellowships start being announced in August-September, with due dates in November and December.

• Read the entire solicitation/application instructions before you start to write. The solicitation usually includes very explicit instructions on what the reviewers want to see included. If the solicitation says to include sections on Broader Impacts and Intellectual Merit, include them! Same for formatting requirements, you don't want to have your application not read for a stupid reason like that.

• Write outlines and a couple of rough drafts before your final draft. Especially if you are proposing something in a research area that is new to you, writing it out two or three times can help you ensure you know what you are writing about.

• Get lots of people to review your drafts! Professor Wasserman will look them over, but don't hesitate to ask your peers in the group (or the Bank group) for advice as well. Many of us have applied for these fellowships, and some have been selected as well.

• Ask for letters of recommendation early, and provide your letter writers with the requirements for the letters. Make their jobs as easy as possible.

• In terms of your actual proposal topic, Professor Wasserman will probably have some ideas he will encourage you to use. When writing, it helps to propose something that you know we have the equipment to successfully pursue in house. That can make the proposal stronger.

• Good figures that back up your proposal really help! Showing that there is precedent for your research and you are building off of prior work (someone else's or even your own) will go a long way.