Why apply for a fellowship?
Being awarded a fellowship that funds your stipend and tuition is a huge boost to your CV. It demonstrates that you can present your ideas and plans well enough to convince an agency that your studies are worth paying for, and of course, it means you have funded part of your own grad school!
Timing and citizenship
Some fellowships are specifically for first or second year students, others may allow students at any stage to apply.
Finding fellowship agencies
Many agencies fund only specific research areas, so you should search using a tool like COS: Community of Science. This funding search site can be used with key words specific to the anticipated research field to find funding opportunities. Anyone with a Penn State email address (e.g., @psu.edu extension) can access Ex Libris Esploro Pivot and Research Professional (Pivot-RP). After you create an account, the advanced search mechanism enables you to restrict the search eligibility requirement to “Graduate student” or “early career”, etc.
List of agencies that fund graduate students
This is a subset of agencies to which Penn State students have successfully applied: