Program contacts and suggests applying to a fellowship

[belowthree]

So the IGERT coordinator at the school I've been accepted at was nice enough to call me today and tell me I should apply for their fellowship. I assume this is a good thing, but I'm curious exactly how this might have come about. The IGERT program isn't really directly related to my research, but I could make an odd fringe case for it and hey who knows.

What I'm a bit more curious about though is whether or not this is something the department likely did because they don't expect to fund me in different ways. I haven't gotten any funding information yet, so did they just take everyone they aren't planning to fund from their admit list, throw the names over the IGERT coordinator and tell the coordinator to call around and get everyone to apply and see who'd get funded under that?

I mean it doesn't really change whether or not I should apply for it (I should) but I'm curious if anyone has an interpretation of what this actually means...

[Tinyboss]

They probably want to fund everyone they possibly can with fellowships from outside the department, budgets being what they are this year.

[paigemont]

The same thing happened to me. I had the same qualms about whether this meant that there might be a lack of funding and whether I should be applying at all, since I might decline their offer anyway, but the head graduate advisor from the department seemed reassuring enough. He said that the department would "aggressively" seek alternative forms of funding if I didn't get the fellowship, but that I should definitely apply.

In short, I don't think there's anything to worry about. My alma mater just approved next year's overall budget last week, so I doubt each individual department can possibly know how much funding they'll have. The fellowship application is probably just standard procedure.

[rising_star]

Dude, they want you to get an IGERT because it pays you $30K for two years and usually the Grad School has already agreed to cover the tuition, health insurance, fees or whatever that they cover for other funded grad students. Likely $30K is more than what your department could pay you. Plus, you know, it doesn't come out of anyone's grants or the department's TA budget. And, honestly, it's a sweet deal if you get it because it's a fellowship with no work requirements.

[belowthree]

Dude, they want you to get an IGERT because it pays you $30K for two years and usually the Grad School has already agreed to cover the tuition, health insurance, fees or whatever that they cover for other funded grad students. Likely $30K is more than what your department could pay you. Plus, you know, it doesn't come out of anyone's grants or the department's TA budget. And, honestly, it's a sweet deal if you get it because it's a fellowship with no work requirements.

Yeah of course, I wasn't asking whether or not it was a good deal, fellowships are always a good deal if you can get them, I was just curious about some of the broader implications like:

1) Does this mean they bothered to even check if someone was a good fit for the IGERT program or are they just telling everyone to apply to see what happens and then deal with everything else later. If I was the department I think I'd probably end up doing the latter but if they were doing the former, that'd be nice to know.

2) If I get rejected from the IGERT program, will the department then go ahead and look for other ways to fund me or is this just what they tell applicants to do when the department doesn't really want to fund them. Sounds like the former is probably closer to the truth but I was worried about the latter.

3) If you apply to a school's IGERT program and then later decide maybe you didn't want to go, is that a bad thing? It sounds like the answer to this is also generally no. I asked the same question of the person who called me and she seemed to indicate that although they'd generally like you to know that you're going, if you can't, you can't.

As for a fellowship being a good deal because of no work requirements, I was chatting with my advisor about it today and apparently IGERT money is one of the few fellowships which comes with a few minor strings. Apparently there's usually some extra classes to take or some other strange things involved in the program. When I talked with my advisor about this at my current school his largest concern seemed to be that I don't generally react well to being required to take courses I'm not interested in, so he thought that those requirements might be a bit more problematic in my case, he seems to know me a bit too well at this point. That said, there's no way I'd turn down or not apply for funding over coursework requirements, (I'd probably wash floors for funding if they wanted to offer me that) just thought it was interesting that it was the first thing he brought up when I mentioned it.

Don't interpret me asking as me being hesitant over whether applying is a good idea. I just figured I'd post a thread to engage in some related idle speculation while I'm filling out the application...

[twocosmicfish]

The IGERT fellowships all have some kind of study requirement attached, such that you have to demonstrate that your specific research area matches the requirements of the grant. Depending on the wording of the specific grant and the details of your research area, you may be able to meet the requirements with coursework but more likely you will need to tweak your research to touch in the grant area.

Remember that most grad admissions is personal between the advisor and the student. Your prospective advisor might not have RA funding for you if you turn it down, but if that is the case you may still get picked up by another, or your advisor may be able to snag a TA position or something similar. Generally if you can get a fellowship they will try to get you something, there are just no guarantees - while you are deciding this, other admits may be snapping up the RA/TA spots.

One last thing: the IGERT's are pretty well-funded (above most RA/TA spots) and the additional class requirement should be well shy of the 20+hrs per week on a TA. Plus, they are usually guaranteed for some number of years, unlike RA/TA gigs which can disappear in some cases overnight (yes, I saw that happen to an RA mid-semester after funding fell through).