If I reject a PhD offer from a certain school, can I reapply in the future?

[Austin90]

Hello everyone. My situation is a little bit complicated due to the scholarships mechanism in my country. In short, the government offers Phd scholarships annually upon providing them with an unconditional offer in certain majors. What they do is that they review all the candidates who managed to get unconditional offers and then decide on who would obtain a scholarship. This in turn means that I might manage to get a PhD offer from one school in the US - which is not easy obviously - but then the government decides no to invest on me. In this case, my PhD offer will be pointless since the government did not choose me. So my question is: If I get a PhD offer from a certain school but then reject it, is it possible to get an offer from the same school in the future?

 

Thank you for reading

 

[drunkenduck]

Many, if not most, PhD programs will provide funding to accepted students in the form of research or teaching assistantships and tuition remission. If you don't receive funding from either the school or your country, you could ask to defer your admission for a year (some schools will do this, some won't), and see if you get funding from your country the next year. Or, you could reject your offer and apply later. I'm not sure if it will affect your changes of receiving another offer. If you maintain a good relationship with the PI and program coordinator and they understand your situation, it might be fine. Whatever you do, don't accept the offer and then rescind your acceptance. 

I'd recommend that you apply to programs that offer full funding themselves.