Distinguished Chancellor's Fellowship UCR

[mathmathmathery]

I received notification that I'm receiving the Distinguished Chancellor's Fellowship from UCR, can anyone fill me in on the details?

What's the teaching load situation with this fellowship?

What's the deal with the ridiculous fees the first two years?

Why isn't there any information on the web about it?

[Eigen]

These are all things that should either be in your offer letter/award letter from UCR, or that you should ask your department. 

For fees, my guess is that the first two years are full time graduate fees (while you take coursework), and they reduce when you reach candidacy and switch to a part-time load. This is typical elsewhere, I can't speak for UCR specifically. 

Details on an internal fellowship at a school are really something best asked to the school, however, as they can change from year to year (and even award to award), making central data on them not all that useful.

[lugosifan]

Hi mathmathmathery,

Congratulations on your acceptance to UCR and fellowship!  I'm not sure about your department, but I received the Distinguished Chancellor's Fellowship from the psychology department at UCR.  Compared to the Dean's Fellowship the Chancellor's offers a slightly higher salary the first year.  According to my package I do not have to teach the first year but am required to TA/GSR for the remaining four years after that to earn my salary.  The package includes health insurance.  PM me if you would like to know further details.

[mobilehobo]

I received notification that I'm receiving the Distinguished Chancellor's Fellowship from UCR, can anyone fill me in on the details?

--Just like previous posters have mentioned, there are two main fellowships UCR offers incoming students: Chancellor's and Dean's. I received the Deans fellowship (which gave me 20K fellowship for Sept to June my first year, then "guaranteed" GSR/TA starting my first summer) so I can only speak to what others have told me. Chancellor's seems to offer an extra 5K to the Deans (I think distributed the following summer), but I've also heard that it can be a two year fellowship. Also a note: UCR has a thing called GradEdge/JumpStart. This is a 5K award to come to UCR in July and work in a lab your first summer. If you don't have that offered and you want it, contact your prospective PI and they can help you get it.

 

One more note about UCR award offers: They tend to list two years of support. The first year is almost always fellowship and the second year can also be fellowship or guaranteed GSR/TA.

What's the teaching load situation with this fellowship?

---Technically with fellowships, you don't teach. I know some departments (possibly math) have their students TA their first year. These are departments with high teaching loads (EX chemistry). I'm not sure how they work that out financially, but a call to your department's financial office can answer these questions. The students in engineering I know who are TAing their first year are deferring their fellowship to their second year and taking TA pay their first year.

What's the deal with the ridiculous fees the first two years?

---Not sure what you mean by ridiculous fees. Any tuition is paid by your fellowship or grad division. Your first year, it could be out-of-state tuition. UCR pays this your first year as well. There are also ~$1000 of fees per year. These are things like the activities fee, gym fee, GSA, etc. Whether this is covered depends on your department. Your award letter will tell you. Mine was covered my first year, but not my second year.

Why isn't there any information on the web about it?

---I'm guessing because it's just UCR's fellowships, not a national or even a UC thing. Also, your award letter answers most everything about it beside department-specific things that grad division couldn't answer anyway.

[mathmathmathery]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I understand the thought that the answers to many of my questions should be contained within the offer letter, but much to my surprise, the only information about the fellowship in my offer letter was the associated monetary award and requirements to keep the award, hence the posting of this thread. 

I was hesitant to contact the department with these questions, as they invited me to a visit and wrote in the email invitation that I should ask questions about financial awards and such during the visit.

9 hours ago, mobilehobo said:

--Just like previous posters have mentioned, there are two main fellowships UCR offers incoming students: Chancellor's and Dean's. I received the Deans fellowship (which gave me 20K fellowship for Sept to June my first year, then "guaranteed" GSR/TA starting my first summer) so I can only speak to what others have told me. Chancellor's seems to offer an extra 5K to the Deans (I think distributed the following summer), but I've also heard that it can be a two year fellowship. Also a note: UCR has a thing called GradEdge/JumpStart. This is a 5K award to come to UCR in July and work in a lab your first summer. If you don't have that offered and you want it, contact your prospective PI and they can help you get it.

Thanks for the information. Cool to know about the fellowships, I would be curious about such summer programs for math students. While we may have persons of interest in math, lab work doesn't really make sense, and it takes a couple years of course work and passing qualifying exams before we really start doing research at the graduate level.

 

The fees I was referring to were the first two years in this:

 

So the fellowship appears to be for 5 years, though really only two years are any different from a normal TA? 

I don't know if both of those years are teaching free or what, but I guess I'll just email the department and find out. 

 

Anyway thanks again for the sensible answers. 

[mobilehobo]

On 3/14/2016 at 10:02 PM, mathmathmathery said:

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I understand the thought that the answers to many of my questions should be contained within the offer letter, but much to my surprise, the only information about the fellowship in my offer letter was the associated monetary award and requirements to keep the award, hence the posting of this thread. 

I was hesitant to contact the department with these questions, as they invited me to a visit and wrote in the email invitation that I should ask questions about financial awards and such during the visit.

Thanks for the information. Cool to know about the fellowships, I would be curious about such summer programs for math students. While we may have persons of interest in math, lab work doesn't really make sense, and it takes a couple years of course work and passing qualifying exams before we really start doing research at the graduate level.

 

The fees I was referring to were the first two years in this:

 

So the fellowship appears to be for 5 years, though really only two years are any different from a normal TA? 

I don't know if both of those years are teaching free or what, but I guess I'll just email the department and find out. 

 

Anyway thanks again for the sensible answers. 

Ok, so as a math student, your financial package is different than someone like me in a research focused department.

First, you have two years of fellowship (that is called "stipend" on here). You will receive 15,000 each year, paid directly to you, without having to do any work for it. The next column is that 'guaranteed GSR/TA'. So while you will receive 15K each year, you will also work as part time as a TA and get paid ~12K. So you will make 27K total each year. The next column says that they will pay your tuition. Sweet. Going to the next column, they will pay your non-resident tuition (NRT, that's out of state tuition) your first year. After your second year, you will be considered a California resident as long as you follow the steps to residency.

 

So now you have 6K of misc fees. Ouch. $1,000 of that is the misc fees students pay (gym, programming, etc.) The other 5K looks like health insurance. That stinks that they don't cover that your first two years. However, you are making an extra 7K on other grad students so I'm guessing that the extra money actually covers these fees, but for whatever reason they can't list it as such. 20K/year is plenty to live on if you get roommates.

 

Your last three years, you won't have a fellowship. However, you are guaranteed a TA or GSR appointment each year at a value of 19K. They also pick up the tab for your health insurance once you're off fellowship, so that's nice.

You can ask about finances any time. Just tell them you're trying to compare to other offers you have.

A word of advice: Your total payments will get paid to you ONLY FROM SEPT TO JUNE. So during July and August, you won't receive payments. You're getting enough money for the entire year, but they're going to give it to you only during the academic year so you'll need to budget correctly!

[UniformlyDivergent]

On 3/16/2016 at 2:11 PM, mobilehobo said:

Ok, so as a math student, your financial package is different than someone like me in a research focused department.

First, you have two years of fellowship (that is called "stipend" on here). You will receive 15,000 each year, paid directly to you, without having to do any work for it. The next column is that 'guaranteed GSR/TA'. So while you will receive 15K each year, you will also work as part time as a TA and get paid ~12K. So you will make 27K total each year. The next column says that they will pay your tuition. Sweet. Going to the next column, they will pay your non-resident tuition (NRT, that's out of state tuition) your first year. After your second year, you will be considered a California resident as long as you follow the steps to residency.

 

So now you have 6K of misc fees. Ouch. $1,000 of that is the misc fees students pay (gym, programming, etc.) The other 5K looks like health insurance. That stinks that they don't cover that your first two years. However, you are making an extra 7K on other grad students so I'm guessing that the extra money actually covers these fees, but for whatever reason they can't list it as such. 20K/year is plenty to live on if you get roommates.

 

Your last three years, you won't have a fellowship. However, you are guaranteed a TA or GSR appointment each year at a value of 19K. They also pick up the tab for your health insurance once you're off fellowship, so that's nice.

You can ask about finances any time. Just tell them you're trying to compare to other offers you have.

A word of advice: Your total payments will get paid to you ONLY FROM SEPT TO JUNE. So during July and August, you won't receive payments. You're getting enough money for the entire year, but they're going to give it to you only during the academic year so you'll need to budget correctly!

Dude, you're a lifesaver. I got a similar offer from UCR (pure math) and I was trying to break down what the actual offer was. Thanks for the clarity!