The Graduate School is pleased to support graduate students applying for scholarships, grants, and fellowships. Below, please find a list of common opportunities that SU students may apply for, pending their eligibility.
To find more discipline-specific opportunities, please navigate to this sheet and sort by discipline, due date, award amount, and more!
External Scholarships, Grants, and Fellowships Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
All Academic Disciplines
AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship
The $25,000 American Dissertation Fellowship offsets scholars’ expenses during their final year of dissertation writing and deepens AAUW’s impact by accelerating diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia. The AAUW American Fellowships are the oldest non-institutional source of graduate funding for women in the United States.
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants must be a US citizen or permanent resident and identify as a woman. Applicants must be writing their dissertation full-time in the year following their application cycle.
- Key Deadlines: Application due end of September each year
AAUW International Fellowships
AAUW’s International Fellowships promotes education and equity for women by investing in international applicants who will be pursuing postgraduate studies or research in the U.S., with the intention of applying their expertise, professional skills, and leadership in the context of their home countries.
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants must identify as a woman and be enrolled in a master’s or professional doctorate degree program
- Key deadlines: Application due end of September each year
Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program
The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program provides fully funded immersive summer programs for U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to learn languages of strategic importance to the United States’ national security, economic prosperity, and engagement with the world. Most languages offered by the CLS Program do not require applicants to have any experience studying critical languages
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants must be a US citizen or national.
- Key deadlines: once annual fall application
Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (DDRIG)
These grants are provided to doctoral students in order to allow them to undertake significant data-gathering projects and conduct field research in settings away from their campus. The award amounts of these grants vary across programs but typically fall between $15,000 to $40,000 (excluding indirect costs).
- Eligibility Criteria: PhD student enrolled in a US higher education institution in one of the offered disciplines. Applicants do not need to be US citizens.
- Key Deadlines: applications for each discipline are due through September – January of each year. Check the website for program specific deadlines.
NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships
NSF’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowships support independent postdoctoral research, allowing fellows to perform work that will broaden their perspectives, facilitate interdisciplinary interactions, and help establish them in leadership positions. These two- or three-year fellowships provide a stipend and a research and training allowance.
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants can be US citizens, nationals, or permanent residents and must have a PhD before beginning the fellowship
- Key Deadlines: Deadlines vary by program. Check website for program specific deadlines.
Humanities & Social Sciences
Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship
This $42,000 fellowship supports early-stage doctoral students pursuing innovative approaches to dissertation research in the humanities and interpretive social sciences for the 2026-27 academic year.
- Eligibility Criteria: PhD student enrolled in a Humanities or Social Science program that has not progressed to candidacy or ABD status.
- Key Deadlines: applications reviewed once annually and due at the end of October of each year.
Charlotte Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships
This Fellowship supports doctoral candidates in their final year of writing, who are working in areas of religion, ethics, values, or morals. Fellows receive a $31,000 stipend to complete the writing stage of their dissertation.
- Eligibility Criteria: PhD candidate in any humanities or social science field. Students in STEM fields may apply provided questions of religious understanding, ethics, or values are central to the dissertation. Applicants must have achieved ABD status and intend to complete dissertation writing in spring/summer of tenured award year.
- Key Deadlines: November 1st of each year
Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
This grant program funds doctoral or thesis research that advances anthropological knowledge. The goal is to support vibrant and significant work that furthers our understanding of what it means to be human. There is no preference for any methodology, research location, topic, or subfield.
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants must be enrolled in a doctoral program and complete necessary coursework by their stated project start date.
- Key deadlines: May 1 and November 1 of each year.
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM)
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
The program supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including STEM education. The program provides a $37,000 stipend + $16,000 cost of education allowance payment for three years.
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants must be a full-time master’s or doctoral student in a STEM or STEM education degree program.
- Key Deadlines: end of October each year.
Blavatnik Postdoctoral Award for Young Scientists
The Blavatnik Regional Awards acknowledge and celebrate the excellence of outstanding postdoctoral scientists from institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut working in the three disciplinary categories of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemical Sciences.
Laureates are awarded $30,000 each and two Finalists in each disciplinary category are awarded $10,000 each in unrestricted funds.
- Eligibility Criteria: Applicants must hold a doctorate degree, be born during or after 1984, and conduct research in the above three disciplinary categories.
- Key deadlines: December of each year.
NIH Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31)
These awards aim to provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.).
- Eligibility Criteria: US citizen or permanent resident enrolled in a research doctoral program
- Key Deadlines: applications reviewed three times annually and due in early April, October, and December.