1. Women in Engineering Research Network
Drexel Fellowships Office
October 20, 2009

2. What is a Fellowship? A fellowship is NOT A fellowship IS
For highly motivated & ambitious students
An opportunity to excel
New Ideas/Research/Work Experiences
Mentoring
Prestige
Monetary Funding
What are fellowships?
Pay for your Education Fellowships can fund your graduate education.
Open Doors These awards are incredibly prestigious, and they open doors for you for the rest of your life. Potential employers and graduate school admissions counselors look again at candidates who have won these awards.
Broaden your Experiences
Some fellowships enable you to research, study or work overseas, experiences that both build your skills and broaden you as a person.
Change How You View Others Expose yourself to places and people and ways of thinking you wouldn’t have otherwise experienced. These opportunities can expand your understanding of the world in which we live.
Change How You View Yourself These experiences build self-confidence. Even simply applying for an award in a serious way builds your self-confidence and expands the range of possibilities you imagine for yourself. They put you in the company of the very top students in the country.

3. Some Major Science Awards
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)
Nov 2-12:
Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship (SCGF) – NEW
Nov 30:
Department of Defense Science, Mathematics, Research for Transformation (SMART)
Dec 15:
National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG)
Jan 4:
Many more fellowships can be found on the Fellowships website.

4. Some Others to Consider
Fulbright Scholarship
Oct: us.fulbrightonline.org
Marshall Scholarship
Sept:
Marshall Sherfield
Boren Scholarship/Fellowship
Jan:
Sherfield: STEM post-doc

5. Awards for Women in Science
Association for Women in Science
varies:
Society of Women Engineers
varies:
Amelia Earhart Fellowships
Nov. 15:
Awis – small
SWE – small. Also a Phila chapter of SWE.
Earhart – for PhDs with focus on aerospace research

6. The Drexel Fellowships Office
Identify opportunities
Advice and counseling
Application process
Personal statements and essays
Logistics
Visit the Fellowships Website -
The Application Process
Research Your Options
One of the more difficult, and sometimes daunting, parts of applying for fellowships is simply deciding what to apply for. Begin your search by looking carefully through our award listings for programs that sound interesting and that you are (or might become) eligible for, though you needn’t be limited by what’s the Fellowships site. There are a wide range of programs out there. If you don’t see a good fit on our site, ask faculty for suggestions and look to industry or academic associations. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, so try to take it in small pieces.
Research the awards in greater depth on the program websites, many of which are wonderful and a few of which are lousy.
Check basic eligibility
Do you meet requirements for degree level, nationality, major field, grade point average, and so on? These are the non-negotiable requirements of the award.
Look for a good fit
Try to find awards that value those things that really matter most to you. Why bother going for an award that prioritizes intense research and scholarship if you are about committed public service (or vice versa)? If the website lists previous winners of the award, look through those. Can you see yourself in there?
Go for it
Don’t be too quick to discount yourself from awards. Someone has to win them, and the only way to assure that you won’t win is to not apply.
Apply for multiple awards
Once you’re doing all this work to apply, you can increase your chance of winning by applying for multiple awards.

7. Key Advice Top Grades + Start early Keep your grades up
Get involved in what you care about
Build relationships with faculty mentors
Start Early
Be aware of the fellowships you’re interested in and their application deadlines (internal & external).
Keep Grades Up
Make sure to keep your grades up. Every semester counts; it is difficult to recover from even one bad semester.
Get Involved
Good grades are a given when contemplating applying for a fellowship. You’ll need to get involved outside of coursework (i.e. research or service) in order to make yourself stand out among other applicants.
Faculty Relationships
Really make an effort outside of the classroom to get to know your faculty. When applying for fellowships, faculty become hugely important whether writing a letter of recommendation or reading through your proposed project.

8. CONTACT US
Drexel Fellowships Office MacAlister Rona Buchalter Sara Lynott