INTRODUCTION
Much like adopting a hamster, attending graduate school is a several year commitment. Although your day-to-day may differ from those with traditional jobs, bills will still be coming due. Many graduate degrees, especially Ph.D.’s, will have some level of “funding,” a vague catch-all term that encompasses money that will be used to pay both your tuition (money your institution receives for their efforts to educate you) and stipend (money that you, the student, receive so you can pay your mounting hamster bills - and, like, rent). If you’re looking for a graduate program, and see an opportunity advertised as “fully funded,” this implies that money exists to cover both tuition and stipend, usually from grants administered by a scientist at the institution or through teaching assistantships.
The MIT-WHOI Joint Program (JP) is a fully-funded program, meaning that admitted Ph.D. students are guaranteed funding for five years [1]. Usually, Ph.D. students in the JP switch between different types of funding (research assistantship, internal fellowships, teaching assistantship, or external fellowships) throughout their program. Unlike the other types of funding, external fellowships are applied for by the student, and if won, will cover that student’s tuition and stipend for some amount of time.
This article will discuss the nitty-gritty details of external fellowships: why would you apply for one? How do they benefit you as a scientist? Are there any complications related to being on fellowship?
What are Fellowships?
Fellowships are considered to be a “means to acknowledge and support outstanding graduate students in pursuit of their advanced degree objectives” [2]. They are usually associated with some stage in your educational career. For instance, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) is designated for individuals currently applying for graduate school, or with less than one academic year in a graduate program [3]. Application requirements will vary from fellowship to fellowship, but will usually require letters of recommendation, a research proposal, and CV. If you’re not sure if you’re eligible for a particular fellowship, fellowship administration should be able to help you.
Why would you want one?
So what’s the point of applying for a fellowship? First of all, when applying for graduate school, you will often be prompted to list any fellowships you have applied for (not received, as many fellowships announce their recipients around the same time graduate schools admit students). Applying for a fellowship shows that you have initiative as a scientist and are committed to pursuing graduate education, and it may help your admission chances, even if you don’t receive the fellowship. In addition, it’s similar to writing a grant proposal, which is a vital skill for scientists. Receiving a fellowship can even change your admission status, as Elena Perez, MIT-WHOI JP student in Physical Oceanography reported. Elena was initially waitlisted at a well-known institution with a strong oceanography program, and upon receiving the NSF-GRFP, was immediately accepted.
Funding situations can also change, especially if a student switches advisors or institutions. Marc Foster, a MIT-WHOI JP student in Chemical Oceanography, applied to the NSF-GRFP while a student at the University of Oregon. After his advisor left the institution, Marc decided to transfer to the JP, where he continued to use the GRFP to fund his tuition and stipend. Once at WHOI, Marc changed advisors, a career shift that the GRFP made relatively simple, similarly to how it supported him through changing institutions. Marc did mention sometimes feeling as though being a “free” student (i.e. the advisor does not have to support you on their grants, and thus may not have completely psychologically committed to the responsibility of advising) may have impacted his advising experiences. Similarly, Marta Faulkner, MIT-WHOI JP Student in Physical Oceanography, also advised any students applying for a fellowship to ensure that your sponsor is fully invested in working on the topic and with you.
Some of the intangible benefits of fellowships include networking opportunities and an early start to a strong funding history. Mark Goldwater, MIT-WHOI JP Student in Applied Ocean Sciences and Engineering, is a recipient of the NDSEG fellowship [4]. Mark noted that an unadvertised benefit of the NDSEG fellowship is that it connects you with the Office of Naval Research community of researchers and program managers.“They [the Navy] like to identify people with quote-unquote talent and follow you through your career,” Mark noted. In addition, the fellowship comes with funding for conference travel, a constant battle for graduate students, as well as support to attend an NDSEG-specific conference.
Fellowships are useful for guiding your own research direction. When Mark first entered graduate school, he was funded through an Office of Naval Research project called Task Force Ocean [5]. As an underwater acoustics researcher, Mark found that the Navy’s specific interest was related to mitigating vessel strikes, while his own personal interest was related to population monitoring. Acquiring a fellowship has given Mark freedom to guide his own academic trajectory in a way that more closely aligns with his interests.
Do fellowships have any downsides?
Employment Status
At many institutions, fellows are not considered employees. While this may not seem like an important part of a graduate student’s experience, it can make life more complicated. Without a fellowship, graduate students usually earn their stipends through teaching assistantships or research assistantships. If you ever took a class or lab section in college that was taught by a graduate student – that was a teaching assistant who was earning their salary by teaching. Teaching and research assistants are considered employees of the university, because the university pays them to do a service. This is pretty clear cut for teaching assistants, but in reality, it is more confusing for research assistants [6,7]
Research assistants earn their stipends by conducting research for their advisors and, therefore, their universities. Research done for the university and research done for the student’s personal education is intrinsically entwined. The research and publications that graduate students produce benefit the laboratory and institution they work for in addition to advancing their own educational experiences.
Similarly, fellows, like research assistants, usually work on research that benefits both the institutions and their personal educations. For example, fellows often publish the work they did with their advisors as co-authors, and, regardless of authorship, the publication is linked to the home institution. So while the institution might not consider them as employees, they are often performing work to that institution’s benefit, and some fellows do not experience a shift in their day-to-day work regardless of if they are on a fellowship or research assistantship.
This gets even hairier when considering the efforts of graduate programs across the country to unionize. Some institutions, such as MIT [8], are not allowing fellows to be part of graduate student unions, because of their non-employee status. In these scenarios, the fellows and non-fellows are split, and only the non-fellows have bargaining power at their institutions. Mark Goldwater told us, ‘It [being on fellowship] does make me feel a little bad because the point of a union is to have a large group of people to stand up to powers of administration. By not letting fellows be in the union, it feels a bit bad because you’re weakening the union who might really desperately need the benefits it provides.”
Marta Falkner, also a NDSEG fellow, has enjoyed her time in the JP, but her past experiences leave her worried about her being left out of the grad student union. She transferred from another institution where she had a negative experience that almost led her to leave science altogether. “I can’t sit back and say, ‘This is ok for me now,’ because there might be other people in my situation before,” Marta told me. She emphasized that she does not want other students to be unsupported in the way she was before coming to WHOI, and she feels that being left out of the union leaves fellows vulnerable.
Taxes and Finances
One, often unexpected, challenge of being on a fellowship is how to do your taxes. Taxes! The ultimate challenge of springtime. Because fellows are paid directly from the funding agency (e.g. NSF, Navy, etc.), most institutions will not issue a W2, but most fellowships are still taxable income. This leaves fellows to grapple with their own taxes, which might mean paying quarterly estimated taxes or paying all at once at the end of the year – it all depends on the fellowship. The administrators at your institution cannot legally give tax advice, and tax professionals might not be familiar with fellowship stipends. Mark Goldwater told us, “One challenge is that the fellowships won’t help you with any sorts of taxes, professionals that you might consult are also confused about how to handle the fellowships in your stipend.” Often fellows are left to seek advice from previous cohorts or graduate school Reddit threads that are explicitly not legally accountable (e.g. [9]).
Another challenge with fellowship finances comes back to the employment status issue. Fellowship stipends can be legally categorized as scholarships, and, therefore, not legally considered earned income. Historically, money derived from fellowships was not allowed to be contributed toward a Roth IRA, which affected Marc Foster at the beginning of his PhD. This rule was changed in 2021 [10], allowing fellowship money to be contributed toward a Roth IRA, but its historical legacy may still affect the potential long-term wealth of fellows.
Conclusion
There is a lot to consider when thinking about applying for a fellowship! We hope that this has covered some of the broad pros and cons of being on fellowship. Applying for a fellowship takes a lot of time – weeks to months of work on an application – so it is important to know what you are signing up for before taking on that time commitment. While we have refrained from giving advice thus far, if we were to give some: weigh all possible funding options, and aim for the funding opportunity that is right for you. If you are applying for a fellowship - work collaboratively with faculty sponsors on your application, and make sure it’s science that’s interesting to both of you. And remember, fellowships are highly competitive. If you do not receive one, you are still a successful scientist by virtue of your application efforts, and there are still ways to fund your Ph.D. (and, again, those astronomical hamster bills).
References
[1] https://mit.whoi.edu/admissions/funding/
[2] https://gradschool.oregonstate.edu/finance/fellowships-and-scholarships/introduction-graduate-fellowships
[3] https://www.nsfgrfp.org/applicants/applicant-eligibility/
[4] https://ndseg.org/
[5] https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/departments/code-32/partnerships/task-force-ocean
[6] https://research.uh.edu/the-big-idea/university-research-explained/the-student-worker-vs-the-fellow/
[7] https://gradschool.oregonstate.edu/finance/graduate-fellowships-and-scholarships/how-are-fellowships-different-assistantships#:~:text=Graduate%20fellowships%20provide%20a%20living,not%20governed%20by%20contractual%20bodies
[8] https://orgchart.mit.edu/letters/update-graduate-student-unionization
[9] https://www.reddit.com/r/GradSchool/comments/mppwtj/how_to_do_taxes_with_nsf_grfp_not_legaltax_advice/
[10] https://pfforphds.com/is-fellowship-income-eligible-to-be-contributed-to-an-ira/#:~:text=arrangements%20(IRAs).-,You%20can%20set%20up%20and%20make%20contributions%20to%20an%20IRA,2%2C%20Wage%20and%20Tax%20Statement
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