Fellowship Resolution Setting for 2024
Matthew Ball (from Unsplash)
“Grad students were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of fellowships danced in their heads…”
This time of the year is inevitably a frenetic one; exams must be taken (and graded), deadlines must be met, professional and personal plans must be arranged. We hope that winter break provides you with well-deserved R&R, as well as a pocket of time that you might be able to dedicate to thinking about your funding and fellowship goals for the upcoming year.
If you have a couple of hours on a post-finals afternoon, you could pick up a Cookie Butter Latte from Coffee Times or an Evermore Spiced Cider from Scented Leaf and set your Fellowship Resolutions for 2024. Use our list below as a jumping off point! And we firmly believe that the search for fellowships is more fruitful with friends, so we encourage you to invite a few members of your cohort to join you.
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Set up (or fine-tune) your Pivot profile! Pivot is a powerful, comprehensive, and frequently updated database of funding opportunities; you can create a search for fellowships and get a weekly email of your personalized match list. This is an amazing resource that your student fees pay for, so make it work for you! The office of Research, Innovation & Impact has this excellent compilation of tutorials, workshops, and tips for getting the most out of Pivot: https://research.arizona.edu/development/funding-opportunities/search-databases-and-useful-funding-sources/cos-pivot.
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Foster your relationship with one of your letter of recommendation writers. Reach out to give them an update on what you’re working on and what you’re thinking of applying for next year. After asking them how they’re doing, you can also find out if they have any advice for your specific fellowship goals.
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Update your more evergreen application materials, such as your CV, or your research statement. This will help you keep track of what you’ve accomplished this semester so nothing falls through the cracks—as well as ensure that come application time, you can focus on the specific requirements of each opportunity rather than spend that time and energy wrestling with the formatting on your CV.
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Do you have any conference travel, research projects, or professional development opportunities planned for the spring semester? If so, put together your GPSC grant application now so it’s ready to go by the deadline in January (or February, depending on the grant you’re applying for). Winning a GPSC grant not only demonstrates to future funders that your work is worth funding; you get to experience the effort that goes into a grant application, as well as helping you formulate statements that you can use in the future.
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In many cases, seeing is believing: this holds true for fellowships as well! Take a look at our archive of Fellowship Success Stories and bookmark ones that feature students who have applied to a grant you’re interested in, come from a similar background or discipline as you, or simply have an inspiring story that you want to integrate the wisdom from into your own application. A huge hurdle for so many graduate students when applying for fellowships is simply believing that they are worthy of a fellowship in the first place. Peer stories like these show you that not only is winning a fellowship possible, the paths to winning one are diverse and relatable. You might not be submission-ready yet, but this library of examples will help you find the inspiration and tangible action steps to get you there.
We hope this is a helpful list of resolutions to get you started on your fellowship planning for 2024, and we look forward to supporting you in your journey in the new year!