Smaller fellowships available?

[Diego M]

Hello all,

I don't want to come off as unappreciative or greedy, so please try to be as understanding as possible while reading.

I recently had enough luck to be awarded an NSF fellowship and will be moving to San Diego, Cali from Miami, Florida with my fiancée. Now, she has been looking for a while but is having trouble finding a job out in SD so my fellowship will have to sustain us both. This would normally not be a problem, except that I have to move across country, pay expensive rent in La Jolla, buy texbooks, a computer etc.

With that in mind, I'm wondering if there are any fellowships that you know of that can work with the NSF and provide me with extra money for books, computer, etc. Similar to the research stipend offered by the DOE csgf.

Any help you all can provide would be greatly appreciated!

Edited April 13, 2011 by Diego M

[robot_hamster]

How much extra money do you need? Perhaps she could just get a temporary job somewhere while she looks for something else. I'm thinking like retail or something. Those kinds of jobs have high turnover anyway (at least where I live they do) and the employer won't be crushed if she quits after a couple of months.

[Raputa]

Have you filled out a FAFSA? It's something you'd have to pay back (eventually) but I know that under certain circumstances you can apply for a loan revision/extra funding. You should check with the school's financial aid office. For example, I'm on a full fellowship, but since I filled out the fafsa this year, I still got loan offers. Obviously you should try to find some free money, but this might be an option if you're really stuck--way better than credit card debt. www.fafsa.gov

[IRdreams]

I don't know if this is true of all undergrad institutions, but my SLAC offers lots of grad funding to alumni. These are based on merit and projected budget which would obviously be higher in your case. The amounts are also not large enough to be conflated with a year stipend at most places (3,000-10,000) for the majority with many below 5,000.