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Effectively as per the questions title, are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy? From what I have seen, most are intended for first year students (i.e. those with no more than twelve months of study), after candidacy has been achieved, or are finishing fellowships for the last semester of work. For example, the Hertz Foundation says the following:

We generally do not award fellowships to students who are already beyond their first year of graduate study except in cases of "exceptional leverage". Such awards are very rare—only three have been made in the past 10 years. (Leverage here means what difference the award of the Hertz Fellowship is likely to make in the kind, quality, and/or personal creativity of the student's graduate research.)

Which seems to be a fairly common theme. As such, I'm looking for answers in two parts:

  1. Are there open grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy?
  2. Are there field specific ones (computational social science or computational science & engineering) that may apply?
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  • 1
    I think this may depend on the field of study.
    – user51076
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 14:43
  • @tilper Quite likely, I'm biased towards general questions since other may have the same problem though. I've updated it with some field specific information though.
    – anonymous
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 14:48

2 Answers 2

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Yes. Several of the fellowship and scholarship mentioned in a previous question (Options other than the NSF for PhD level grants?) are open to non-first year graduate students.

For example, The EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship, The Ford Foundation through the National Academies, NSA Fellowships, Google Research, and The Data Incubator all allow people to apply past the first year.

The NSA, Google Research, and Data Incubators Fellowships all target computer science. "The Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students." The EPA Fellowships target environmental science, which could include computational science applied to studying the environment.

Edit note November 2019: The EPA no longer offers their fellowship program.

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  • The Data Incubator appears to be for people that have their PhD and want to enter industry. I don't see anything about PhD student support.
    – anonymous
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 15:46
  • They have a Fellowship Program, albeit it only covers attending their training camp. Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 15:56
  • Yup, that's what I'm referring to. It's not exactly something you could use to find a PhD.
    – anonymous
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 15:59
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One example is the National Physical Science Consortium, emphasis mine:

Eligibility:

NPSC welcomes applications from any qualified U.S. citizen who has the ability to pursue graduate work at an NPSC member institution. Applicants at any stage of their graduate program may apply, as long as they will be available to accept two summers of paid internship. Those who already possess a doctoral degree are ineligible.

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  • @anonymous, if you read the link, or what I wrote in the answer, you will see that students may apply to GRFP "prior to completing the first term or quarter of the second year of your full-time graduate program." Please consider removing your downvote since GRFP, allowing students to apply in their second year, clearly meets your criterion of being open to students "past the first year."
    – user51076
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 15:05
  • @anonymous, ok, now that you have changed your criteria I will update my answer.
    – user51076
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 15:14
  • No worries, I'd never heard of the NPSC so that helps, it really does seem like there's not much out there for those in the middle years though.
    – anonymous
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 15:17

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