PhD Fellowships - Engineering programs

Graduate School
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Hello! I’m back after a 4-year hiatus. My son will be a senior at MIT this fall (time has flown by!) and he asked me to help him find fellowship/scholarship opportunities for a PhD program. This community was incredibly helpful to us four years ago as he navigated the college admissions process, so I figured I’d check back in. I can’t find any threads on this topic but knowing CC, there are probably a lot and I’m just not seeing them. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

He is considering MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, Duke, Harvard, and several others. His top choice is MIT and since he has a 5.0/5.0 and good relationships with quite a few professors, it’s quite likely he will be accepted. His advisor has told him that he will likely be accepted to any program he applies to and so it’s more a matter of deciding where he wants to go, and paying for it. (I am in awe of my son - he has worked incredibly hard and it has clearly paid off).

Thank you!

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Many times PhD programs are funded by the university. If accepted, you will receive a multiyear financial aid package that will outline how you can expect to fund your program. Sometimes there are fellowship years, and other times there are years that you will be expected to teach or work as a research assistant (and that will cover your expenses and pay a monthly stipend). You shouldn’t need to look for outside fellowships. The university that accepts you should be funding you.

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He should look at the prestigious graduate fellowships like Marshall, Rhodes and Gates. These have long term influence above and beyond a regular funded PhD. But it’s getting late in the day to line up a nomination, many colleges want to know in early summer of junior year. I think my S had to do the internal application at his college by June of junior year. Gates is not based on college nomination so that may still be a possibility.

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Rhodes is only for Oxford and Marshall is also only for UK-based schools, no? These don’t seem to be programs that the OP is interested in anyway.

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Thank you for your reply! He ruled out Rhodes as it is for U of Oxford only. Similarly, the Marshall is for programs in the UK. The Gates scholarship is only for undergrads, or existing Gates scholars continuing their studies into grad school, from what I can tell.

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I meant Gates Cambridge (only for the University of Cambridge):

Maybe you aren’t interested in going to the U.K. That’s fine, but note that the point of these scholarships is not just to get a PhD but to be in an elite cohort that has influence at the highest levels of politics and government (Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg etc).

Just to give an example for someone in the news recently:
Usha Vance (Gates Cambridge, Yale Law School, Supreme Court clerk etc)

An example of someone I think highly of in a more technical area with this sort of pedigree is Will Roper:

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Wow - congrats to your son.

My only “thought” would be - is it wise to stay at the home university or is it better to spread your wings?

I know a young man in a similar situation for CS at a top public - and chose CMU vs. the current school for that reason.

Sounds like your student has a bright future no matter what he decides.

Congrats to him.

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I can’t emphasize this strongly enough…you don’t pick a school. You pick a person and the lab they run. The school name does not determine the prestige of a doctoral program. The advisor does. Depending on what problem he wants to tackle, it’s quite possible that A&M or Wisconsin could be far more desirable than any school listed here.

He should read the literature on the subject area he intends to study to find out who is doing what. It will take some work but then become apparent fairly quickly who the heavy hitters are. Until he does this, he shouldn’t have a “favorite.”

He should then contact them and start kicking tires.

He shouldn’t accept an unfunded offer. All top quality engineering doctoral programs have money to pay their PhD candidates.

Finally, and this is the very most important thing, he has to like his primary advisor. It’s like getting married. If the advisor is a domineering jerk, it will be a miserable grind.

TLDR; school name doesn’t matter at all. Pick the advisor not the school, someone you like.

Note: I’m pretty shocked at how poorly schools do at preparing students for this process.

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Reposting for further emphasis.

And adding, any PhD program worth attending will be fully-funded. Do not accept any doctoral program for which you have to pay a dime.

Don’t understand the last portion. His advisor at MIT woudl know that their doctoral students are fully funded. (And would know that MIT’s peer group are also fully funded.)

That said, bringing in outside fellowships can offer more funding for research and/or replace a TA requirement, on top of the fully funded program at the Uni. (or fellowships can replace teh Dept-required contribution freeing up funds for other stuff. At least that is how is works at Stanford.)

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When he first told me he wanted to pursue a PhD I told him he needed to pick a lab and talk to a sponsor in an area of engineering he’s interested in, based on my own experience many years ago in an oceanography PhD program. He told me that for engineering it’s different and thats what his professors are telling him. I also told him that he shouldn’t have to pay for any PhD and the lab would find a way to sponsor him.

So if nothing else, it’s nice to hear from you guys that I wasn’t necessarily wrong in the guidance I was providing!

At the same time, I’d be very surprised if he was getting completely off-base advice given who he’s been talking to. So I suppose as he moves forward through this process he will learn more and figure it out as he goes.

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It’s not, and I can’t fathom why they’d say that. He wants to find the programs that are tops in the problem(s) he wants to tackle. Let’s say for example he’s into fluid dynamics. The doctoral programs strongest in acoustics are not going to be the same as those strongest in hypersonic aerodynamics. In fact, for acoustics the best programs might be in Europe.

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your advice was spot-on. OTOH, coming in with something like a NSF fellowship is a BIG add to the CV, not to mention, makes the Dept love you more since it saves them money. Other named fellowships can add to the CV as well.

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Thank you so much! Yes, we have absolutely considered the negatives of staying at the same place he did his undergrad and in fact my dad, who has a PhD in chemistry, has strongly advised him NOT to stay there. So my son took that input and checked around with some profs and their feedback was essentially, yeah, that’s generally good advice but MIT is kind of an exception to that rule. Makes sense, but I am still encouraging him to consider other options.

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Thanks, makes sense and aligns with my own knowledge and experience.

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Yeah, he has zero interest in politics or government. He just wants to be an engineer. Thanks!

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Only if they are very good at what he wants to pursue. There’s NO guarantee that they are. If they are, no problem.

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Exactly. Perhaps Caltech might be better at what he wants to research? Or Stanford, or Berkeley, or… Or, perhaps one of them would want him so bad, they’d toss in a Uni fellowship to support his research to replace TA responsibilities?

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Or, for certain topics, like hypersonic aerodynamics, A&M, Purdue, VT and Arizona, to name a few. The above mentioned have hypersonic wind tunnels. MIT doesn’t. Purdue has the only quiet Mach 8 tunnel in the world.

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These programs are not “safeties” for any student, no matter who great. Students are accepted to programs based on whether they can be funded and whether somebody who shares their interest has an opening in their lab. Even for open spots, there are going to be at least three or four top-notch applicants.

Your son will be competing with peers.

You are correct:

100% correct. It is a good idea to contact potential advisors, not for funding but for interest and to have an advocate.

If he doesn’t already have a idea what he wants to work on and more importantly, and/or is not able to express this in his cover letter, he will be at a serious disadvantage, compared to those who have this understanding. That is, in fact, the primary requirement for a prospective PhD student.

He will also be at a serious disadvantage, compared to somebody who has take a couple years off and worked is a research lab. It is more difficult to demonstrate “potential” for research, than it is to demonstrate actual research skills.

What has your son done by way of research experience? Keep it general, of course.

Re: fellowships.

As far as I know, only GRFP is open for PhD program applicants. I think that the rest are for enrolled graduate students only, but I may be wrong.

The GRFP is a research proposal. The applicant has to have detailed research plan, not just “I would like to focus on fluid dynamics in zero gravity environments”.

An applicant with a GRFP is attractive, even for places like MIT (for which that level of funding is peanuts). An applicant who not only knows what they want to do, but how to do it, and is able to write an excellent grant proposal to boot, is exactly the sort of PhD student that any program would love to have.

I mean, for MIT Engineering, $53,000 a year is pocket change. But PhD students who can hit the ground running are far more difficult to come by than the $159,000 that the fellowship provides.

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Well I can’t let this go unchallenged. Purdue is building said tunnel. It’s not operational. :wink:

Otherwise, I agree. The best schools for a particular student are going to be based on that student’s research interest. Choosing a grad school based on the overall institution’s “name brand” alone is a good way to find yourself in a research group that is not a good fit.

Find the research you want to perform. Look for the top labs in that area, then find the one that fits best. Maybe that’s at an elite private or maybe it’s at a land grant public. It doesn’t really matter as long as you are doing the research you want in a lab and program that fits you well and has the resources to train you.

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