The Fellowship Boot Camp is a 10-day intensive writing workshop in which students complete an application for one of the following major national awards:
National Science Foundation, Graduate Research Fellowship Program
Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship
Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
While involved with the boot camp, participants receive a $1,000 stipend for housing and other expenses. Participants may also be eligible for a travel or research award of up to $1,000 if they submit a complete proposal to one of the identified fellowships. Boot camp attendees meet as a large group and in smaller, rotating fellowship-specific clusters. On most session days, lunch is provided for participants.
Graduates of the boot camp have enthusiastically endorsed the program:
The boot camp “definitely helped me gear my essay towards a larger audience, which is particularly important since the review panel for my discipline may include scholars from other fields”
“I loved it and felt like because of the difference in discipline everyone had a unique perspective and advice so each reviewer’s comment was different instead of getting the same feedback over and over again”
“The most important things I learned during the boot camp were about addressing the broader impacts criterion of the NSF GRFP. I feel much more confident now about telling a story relating my experiences to the evaluation criteria”
Applications, including a recent CV and a rough draft of a 2 or 3 page personal statement are due to the graduate school in early June.
The application is available here.
