Non-financial benefits of fellowships?

[gnarls_barkley]

Hi all, 

Looking for a bit of feedback on a couple offers I've received from PhD programs in a health science-related field.

 

One offer will provide full support (NIH training grant) for my duration and some additional mentoring/training. The other is from a more 'prestigious' program, but only for a 1 year RA position with subsequent years *usually* getting funded. The program in question is still very solid, but not quite at the level of the other (think top ~20 vs top ~10, in terms of US News, NIH funding, etc).

 

My question: aside from the obvious benefits of a higher stipend and more research freedom, are there non-financial benefits to fellowships in academia? In particular, would it carry additional weight when looking for post-doc positions, faculty positions etc? Basically trying to figure out if the trade-off of a lower ranked school with a fellowship is worth passing over a higher ranked school, with so-so support.

[TakeruK]

Yes, at least in my field, future fellowship committees do look at your award history and you usually see that the winners of the big postdoc fellowships often won grad school fellowships as well as undergrad fellowships. Winning prestigious external and competitive fellowships signals that you proven yourself in the past. Note that this only applies to external and competitive fellowships--some grad school admission-based fellowships do not fall into this category.

[rising_star]

What TakeruK said. Having a fellowship is more prestigious and can make you stand out when applying for other funding opportunities in the future. There's also the possibility that the fellowship comes with fringe benefits, like money for conference travel, health insurance, or to do your own research.