What is the Stanford Graduate Fellowships Program?

The Stanford Graduate Fellowships Program in Science and Engineering annually awards approximately 100 three-year fellowships providing tuition support and stipend to outstanding students pursuing a doctoral degree in science and engineering.

Letter for New SGF Recipients
from the Vice Provost for Graduate Education

 

The SGF Program is supported by a group of more than 150 endowed funds established by alumni, friends, faculty, corporations and foundations who share Stanford's commitment to excellence in graduate education in the sciences and engineering. The endowments support 324 Stanford Graduate Fellowships, each individually named as specified by the donor. The goal is to continue to make graduate education attractive to the most talented students in the world and to attract the best of them to Stanford University.

Graduate students applying for doctoral study at Stanford do not apply for this fellowship, but are automatically considered once they have been admitted

SGF Fellows can explore labs in a variety of fields and make a compelling argument for acceptance by their first-choice lab, without being a financial drain on a faculty project. "Support for that first year is critical. With flexibility, students can take more time to explore options. This offers a tremendous matchmaking possibility to get the right students together with the right researchers," says James Plummer, the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and the John M. Fluke Professor of Electrical Engineering.

The Stanford Graduate Fellowships Program in Science and Engineering first awarded fellowships in 1997. The program was initiated by Gerhard Casper, then President of Stanford University, and is designed to support the University's commitment to attract the very best graduate students and to reduce its dependence on federal funding for Ph.D. training. The fellowships are available in the natural sciences, mathematics, statistics, engineering, the basic sciences in the School of Medicine, and those social sciences, including education, which are now dependent on federal assistantship support for their doctoral students.

Most of each new cohort of Stanford Graduate Fellows will be newly admitted graduate students in one of the eligible fields. The rest will be promising students who have already completed a year or more of graduate study at Stanford or elsewhere and have demonstrated their excellence in doctoral level research and study. 

 

Top of page