Career Center - Graduate School

Graduate School - Financial Aid

Financial Aid is available for graduate school. Most graduate students finance their education through fellowships, assistantships, grants, loans, or a combination of those funding sources. Below you can find basic definitions of these funding types along with links to help you locate funding sources.

Definitions

Fellowships are typically granted to individuals to cover their living expenses while they carry out research or work on a project. Awards may be single or multiple-year. Awards are usually based on an individual's merit as measured by grades, GRE scores, publications, and letters of recommendation.

Assistantships are usually campus-affiliated work assignments (e.g. graduate teaching instructor, research associate) that provide an individual a stipend and often waive tuition and/or other matriculation fees.

Grants are most often awarded to cover expenses associated with carrying out research or other specific projects, such as travel, materials, or computers.

Loans are available from the government and other private sources.

Links

FastWeb: Free Scholarship and College Searches, & Financial Aid Tools - Free scholarship search site that has 500,000 scholarships worth more than $1 billion. Registration required.

FinAid: The Smart Student Guide to Financial Aid - This award-winning site is a comprehensive annotated collection of information about student financial aid on the web.

UCB Graduate Division - Provides information on financial assistance for graduate students at Cal.

UC Berkeley Scholarship Connection - Cal's central clearinghouse for information on merit-based scholarships.

Fellowships for University Students and Graduates

100 Minority Scholarship Gateway List – Created by Black Excel