Recruiting/First Year Fellowships

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I got accepted to several schools all with recruiting/first year excellence fellowships. They are small amounts, but do they mean anything significant? Would I still possibly be considered for higher fellowships or that is it?

Applied to:
UT, Rice, UPenn, Carnegie,  UCSD.  WashU. Notre Dame. UWashington.

[TakeruK]

Do you mean potentially more scholarships or fellowships in this year, or in future years? Usually the admission offer letter is indeed the final offer of funding. If you are still in the running for other fellowships, they would have let you know. You can still get more funding potentially, if you have external fellowships (but ask them how it affects the funding -- some schools will just take away internal fellowships if you get external ones). Usually they are pretty vague when asked about this, mostly just saying "you won't get any less than if you didn't take the fellowship".

 

Also, sometimes these fellowships are just because they want to entice you or acknowledge a sponsor. For example, I know some schools will fund all their students $X/year, no matter what. However, the top students get a fellowship of the same value (named after whatever donor/sponsor/funding agency) while the others just get it as a general stipend. It's still a good thing since it shows you are in the top level and having named fellowships on a CV can help you win future awards. 

 

As for future years, you can probably still apply to external fellowships that might be worth more in the future -- usually most awards say you are eligible in the first year (or two) of graduate studies and there are also some awards for senior students. For internal awards, I usually don't see very many internal awards for older grad students, but you should check the school's financial office pages for details. 

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Thank you so much. It is really helpful to know this kind of info before attending the visits.