Funding

Virtually all our incoming Ph.D. students have some form of financial assistance. The department awards merit-based fellowships and assistantship guarantees to incoming students on the strength of their individual applications as a whole. We give careful consideration to letters of recommendation, to the skills and capacities evidenced by writing samples, and to educational achievements indicated by test scores, grade-point averages, and academic honors.

All applicants are automatically considered for a variety of funding options. Departmental support takes many forms, ranging from full fellowships and tuition to competitive aid packages offering various combinations of fellowships, tuition and/or fee credits, teaching or research assistantships, and/or loans. In addition, there are a number of competitive fellowships. Among these are the Cota Robles Fellowship and the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship to encourage diversity and the Chancellors Fellowship, and the Regents Fellowship. Additional information about financial aid is available through the UCI Graduate Office. Particularly qualified applicants across the various subfields are encouraged to consider extramural application to nationally competitive graduate fellowship programs.

The Department also offers a variable number of multi-year fellowship packages. These consist of various combinations of financial support and Teaching Assistantship or Research Assistantships. These multi-year fellowships and fellowship packages are awarded to the most competitive candidates for admission.

In addition, the Center for the Study of Democracy offers several Democracy Fellowships for incoming Ph.D. students in political science or sociology who participate in the training program and activities of the Center. The program focuses on the empirical study of democracy in the United States and internationally. These awards normally include fellowship support for the first year, and TA commitments for additional years.

After the first year, TAships are the basic funding vehicle for most students. A number of graduate students are employed by externally funded research projects organized by members of the faculty. The University and the School of Social Sciences also provides competitive dissertation research fellowships for top ranked students admitted to candidacy, and our dissertation students are generally very competitive for both campus-wide and extramural fellowships.

• Funding Application Process
• Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships
• Office of Research and Graduate Studies
• Scholarships
• Social Sciences Graduate Office - Research & Funding
  

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