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How To Launch A Side Hustle in Grad School

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Side hustles are all the rage these days. Everyone seems to have one, and some even translate into big money! However, in my experience, few grad students are aware of (or understand how) to get one going. Even fewer faculty seem to be aware of how they could have one themselves OR how they can support their students in this endeavor. In this post, I’m going to talk to you about why you want to launch a side hustle, and why it’s worth your time to do it in grad school. If your a faculty member these tips can also apply to you!

Today’s article on how to launch a side hustle is by Dr. Leigh A. Hall. To read an article today by Emily, please visit Leigh’s website, Teaching Academia.

launch side hustle

What Is A Side Hustle?

A side hustle is a way to earn extra cash. Ideally, it’s going to be something you are super passionate about because you will be spending extra time creating it. Side hustles happen outside your current full time job (or graduate studies/assistantship). You decide how much time you want to devote to it and when you want to put in the hours. You can work with someone else, but most side hustles tend to start out as solo ventures. As they become more successful, you may find you need to pay others to help you. Some people have such successful side hustles that they eventually leave their full time job and devote themselves solely to their project.

Why Should You Launch A Side Hustle?

You might be thinking you have enough to do right now. You don’t need to have extra demands on your time. And there’s no guarantee that a side hustle will pay off anyways, right? But think about it this way – if your side hustle is inline with things you already enjoy doing then you’re not wasting any time by devoting yourself to it. If you were going to do it anyways, then you lose nothing by seeing if you can generate some extra income by sharing your work with others.

However, the side hustle is not just about you. While it can be a great way to generate extra income, ultimately you are providing a service that benefits others. If people are willing to pay you for your work – whatever it may be – that means they find value in it which means you are enhancing the lives of others in some way.

Finally, a side hustle can allow you to establish yourself beyond your academic career. It will allow you to connect with more people, and different people, than you likely would through academia alone. This can bring you a whole host of opportunities and open doors that otherwise would have stayed close. Your work as an academic will likely reach a narrow subset of people. Add a side hustle to that and you can expand your reach.

How To Identify The Right Side Hustle For You

Ok – you’re interested but unsure about where to start. The first thing is to figure out what you want your side hustle to be about. It can be connected to your day job, but it doesn’t have to. If you have a hobby that you are exceptionally good at then you could turn that hobby into your side hustle. It doesn’t have to extend from your job.

For example, several years ago I ran a successful yoga blog. I’m not a yoga teacher. I just wrote about going to yoga classes and what I learned in the process about myself. Eventually the blog ran its course, but I was able to get some great sponsorships and support along the way.

Because my blog added value to the yoga community, companies would send me yoga mats, clothes, shoes, all kinds of goodies for review. I even got to review a meal kit service so I had groceries mostly paid for now and then. My yoga practice was a serious hobby, and it was able to generate some income for me – even if just through free products – that I enjoyed and benefited from.

Currently, my side hustle extends from my job. I have a number of courses I sell. Do I generate massive amounts of income? No, but I do enjoy a nice supplement that I can do with as I please (I often just save it).

The key here is to pick a niche that you enjoy and that you want to share with others. And it’s perfectly fine to have both a hobby and a professional side hustle! You get to set the hours and how much you will be involved so do what’s best for you.

Launching Your Side Hustle

There are a number of ways to launch your side hustle, and any combination of them can work. After you identify your niche, you’ll need to consider how you want to connect with others. Some common ways to do this are:

  1. A website. You can get one for free (wordpress.com) and later move to a paid version. A free version lets you test the waters and play around without the stress of having to pay for it.
  2. A YouTube channel: I highly recommend this. Everything is going in the direction of video. A channel will allow you to build an audience. And while you are giving people content for free, once they see that you have something of value they will start to buy your more in-depth products.
  3. Patreon: Admittedly, I need to get this one going. Patreon allows you to sell memberships at varying tiers. For example, you might have people who give you 5.00 every month in exchange for specific things you create or offer. A second tier of people might give you 10.00 a month and receive something different/more. You get to decide how to price the tiers and what people get in return.
  4. Selling Courses: You may want to create one or more courses that people can access asynchronously. A number of platforms allow for this with varying advantages and disadvantages. Udemy allows you to post your courses free of charge, but they will take a hefty fee in return (they also help with marketing your courses). Platforms like Teachable and Thinkific require you to pay an ongoing fee or yearly subscription for your courses to be hosted, and they do no marketing. However, you stand to keep more of your money each time you sell a course here than on Udemy.

Launching your side hustle thus requires:

  • A clear vision of what you are going to be offering
  • Who would be interested in your product/creations?
  • Understanding where to house yourself and your work

A side hustle is going to require a mix of free and paid content. You are going to want to have a website or YouTube Channel (likely both) and a plan in place for content development. What do you want to sell? When will you find time to create this content and build out your offerings (both free and paid).

If you’re wondering if there is a right/wrong/best time to launch your side hustle my answer to you is this:

There is no best time to launch. You need to know what it is you want to do and what platforms you want to start out on. Then you go. You don’t need to do everything at once, and you can build out along the way as you get comfortable. The trick is to not get caught up on something not being good enough or that you only need to do X and then everything will be perfect. We’re not looking for perfect here. We’re looking for a few key things to be in place and then it’s time to go.

Having a side hustle can bring in extra income while allowing you to grow and develop professionally or with a hobby. The sooner you get started the sooner you will start to reap the rewards.

Dr. Leigh A. Hall is a professor at the University of Wyoming where she holds the Wyoming Excellence Chair in Literacy Education. She’s had a side hustle for four years now selling courses that can benefit graduate students and early career academics. See her work at TeachingAcademia.com.

The Complete Guide to a Side Hustle for a PhD Student or Postdoc

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It’s no secret that PhD students and postdocs are paid a meager salary, sometimes not even as much as the local living wage. While a fraction of graduate students have probably always pursued side income to supplement their stipends/salaries, e.g., through part-time jobs, moonlighting, or odd jobs, only in recent years has it become easy to make money online or make money from home. Enter the ‘side hustle.’ The term exploded in popularity during the Great Recession along with the ‘gig economy.’ The flexibility of modern side hustles has made it possible for students and postdocs to fit their income-generating activities around their busy research schedules.

This article details why a graduate student or postdoc would want to side hustle, whether it’s allowed by their university/institution, examples of real side hustles held by PhDs, how to best manage the side income, and advice from PhDs with successful side hustles.

side hustle PhD postdoc

Motivations for Side Hustling

The motivations for having a side hustle during your PhD training are to make up for the deficiencies in what the university provides: money (primarily) and career-advancing experiences.

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Pursuing your PhD during graduate school or gaining additional training as a postdoc is supposed to be your full-time (or more) pursuit. Research is life, right? Unfortunately, the positions don’t pay anywhere near as well as a regular full-time job.

The best case scenario for a PhD student or postdoc is that you will be paid enough to support yourself without making extreme lifestyle sacrifices, i.e., living in a van. However, there are plenty of programs and universities that do not even meet that low bar for a single person with no dependents. For a graduate student or postdoc with a dependent spouse (e.g., of an international trainee) or children, the low stipend or salary is almost certainly inadequate.

Graduate students almost always turn first to cutting their living expenses to be able to live within their means. They know that they are supposed to devote the lion’s share of their weekly energy to their coursework, research, and teaching. But when their backs are against the wall, some make money on the side to avoid going (further) into debt.

Career-Advancing Experiences

Some graduate students and postdocs are motivated to side hustle not by lack of income but rather lack of practical career preparation.

What careers does a PhD or postdoc prepare you for? These days, the vast majority of PhDs are not hired into tenure-track faculty positions. (Time to stop calling the jobs most PhDs get “alternative”, right?) Some universities have acknowledged this and put in place programming to help PhDs transition out of academia (my alma mater, Duke University, and in particular the Pratt School of Engineering, is innovating in this area), while others are still catching up.

Of course, PhDs have plenty of transferable skills that can be put to use in a wide variety of careers, but landing a job is still challenging.

Further reading: How My PhD Prepared Me for Entrepreneurship

A judiciously chosen side hustle (or even volunteer work) can help a PhD build out her resumé/CV and network to stand out from the other PhD applicants. A side hustle can teach you new skills, give you an opportunity to demonstrate the skills you already possess, and introduce you to professionals who can further your career journey.

Video Series: How to Increase Your Income as a Graduate Student

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Are Side Hustles Allowed by Your PhD Program or Postdoc Position?

While some academics may take the view that side hustling distracts from classes, teaching, research, etc., for some people a side hustle is the main factor that enables them to stay in their graduate programs or postdoc positions. They side hustle because they want to keep doing PhD-level research; otherwise, they can just leave and earn more money elsewhere! If conceived and managed properly, a side hustle is not a distraction from the student or postdoc’s training but rather an enhancement of it.

If you think about graduate school or your postdoc as similar to any other type of job, usually the only stipulations regarding your side hustle are that: 1) it does not interfere with your primary job and 2) it does not present a conflict of interest. That logic is helpful for thinking through whether a side hustle is allowed, but the universities sometimes add layers of complexity.

Further reading: Can a Graduate Student Have a Side Hustle?

Side Hustle Permissibility by Position Type: International, Fellow, Employee, Etc.

There may be explicit bans on making money on the side or it may be frowned upon. The income and experience gained from a side hustle is not worth getting kicked out of your graduate program or postdoc position.

International trainees

The F-1 and J-1 visas generally only permit employment directly in your capacity as a graduate student or postdoc. Sometimes, you can seek permission for other employment ventures, such as Optional Practical Training (OPT) for F-1 visa holders. A side hustle that you work on simultaneously with your research will likely not comply with these rules, so it’s a no-go.

Fellowship Recipients (Graduate or Postdoc)

Check the terms of your fellowship funding supplied by your university, employer, or funding agency. There may be a stipulation that no outside income is allowed as the fellowship is designed to support you completely and require your complete dedication. If you choose to pursue a side income against the terms of your fellowship, proceed with extreme caution and recognize the downside is potentially losing your primary funding. In other cases, outside income is not mentioned by the fellowship terms or is even explicitly allowed.

Research and Teaching Assistants

This is the category of graduate students most likely to be able to get away with a side hustle or be explicitly allowed because your responsibilities are generally time-limited to 20 hours per week (officially). Of course, beyond that, you are responsible for your dissertation work, so side hustling might conflict with that important pursuit. If you are in a contract with your university, check its terms. If outside income is not allowed, proceed with caution as you might lose your assistantship. You might, however, find a provision that allows outside income, perhaps up to a certain number of hours per week.

Postdoc Employees

A postdoc employee has a regular job, albeit a demanding one. Your desire to side hustle at that point in your training is more likely motivated by career advancement rather than income. Again, check your contract, but a side hustle may very well be permissible as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work. If you are working in your field, though, it could be a good idea to seek your advisor’s permission in advance.

What Does Your Advisor Think?

The person with the most important opinion on your side hustle–after you–is your advisor. Allowed, disallowed, frowned upon… The status of side hustling in the eyes of your university, department, or funding agency is less important than its status to your advisor. If your advisor is an unforgiving taskmaster who expects his myopic view of the supremacy of research to be adopted by his trainees, a side hustle is a very risky endeavor. However, if your advisor is a reasonable and kind person who respects work-life balance, it may be better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission if your side hustle is discovered and viewed negatively.

The Bottom Line: The Spirit of the Law

The spirit of the law when it comes to side hustling during graduate school or your postdoc is that it should not distract from your training. (This sentiment does not apply to visa holders; the letter of the law is most important in that case.) Financial and career stress itself can easily distract from training, so it may be a matter of choosing the lesser of two ‘evils.’

Prohibitions against outside income make sense when the income comes from a part-time job with fixed hours (meaning that you wouldn’t be able to stay late in lab if necessary) or if it takes so much time overall that you can’t complete your work healthily. But I don’t find prohibitions against outside work that doesn’t interfere with the student or postdoc’s primary ‘job’ any more logical than prohibitions against having a family or a hobby (assuming no conflict of interest).

Ultimately, rules or no rules and advisor’s opinion aside, you are the only person who gets to decide whether to pursue a side hustle. You are the one who will manage it and make sure that it enhances your PhD training instead of detracting from it.

Video Series: How to Increase Your Income as a Graduate Student

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Types of PhD Side Hustles and Examples of PhD Side Hustles

I break side hustles for PhDs into four categories: ones that advance your career, ones that you enjoy, ones that pay well (enough), and passive income. A side hustle that pays well and advances your career is ideal. If you can’t achieve that, doing something you enjoy is obviously preferable to doing something that you dislike or feel neutral toward that simply pays some bills. Passive income is outside of this ranked order as it doesn’t involve trading time directly for money.

By the way, if you are looking for a way to increase your income that your advisor would be totally on board with, try applying for a fellowship. I’ve created a guide to applying for and winning fellowships that includes a list of broad, portable fellowships that pay full stipends/salaries.

Further reading: How to Find, Apply for, and Win a Fellowship During Your PhD or Postdoc

PhD Side Hustles that Advance Your Career

There’s no better type of side hustle than one that pays you and helps you along in your career. Through this type of side hustle, you put your current skills to use, learn new skills, expand your network, and/or explore a possible career path. Often, this sort of side hustle is related to your current field of research or uses skills you’ve honed during your PhD. You might even be able to start working for a potential future employer while you’re still in training.

Examples of PhD side hustles that advance your career are:

  • Consulting
  • Writing
    • Freelance writing (Derek)
    • Freelance academic writing (Vicki)
    • Journalism
  • Editing
    • Freelance scientific paper editing (Julie and Amy)
    • Freelance scientific paper editing (Jenni)
    • Thesis/dissertation editing
  • Internships
    • Scientific research summer internship (Alice)
    • Engineering summer internship (David)
  • Professional fellowships
    • Science policy fellow (Emily)
  • Analysis
    • Research analyst for investor relations (Adam)
  • Teaching

PhD Side Hustles that You Enjoy

Sometimes an enjoyable hobby can be monetized or you can find meaning and delight in a side hustle. This kind of side hustle is one you would likely spend some time doing even if you weren’t being paid and can be particularly revitalizing during the long slog of your PhD or postdoc.

Examples of PhD side hustles that you might enjoy are:

  • Monetized hobby
  • Non-academic teaching
  • Resident advising
    • Resident advising for graduate students (David)
    • Resident advising for a fraternity (Adrian)

PhD Side Hustles that Pay the Bills

If the only purpose a side hustle fulfills is bringing in some money, it’s done its job. Sometimes these pursuits are necessary for survival, but you shouldn’t spend any more time on them than absolutely necessary.

Examples of PhD side hustles that (likely) simply bring in income are:

  • Tutoring
  • Retail
  • Food service
  • Uber/Lyft
  • Childcare

PhD Passive Income

Passive income has become a bit of a buzzword in recent years. Ostensibly, passive income occurs after you make some kind of investment that then pays a residual.

Making a monetary investment in a rental property or dividend-paying stock is a classic example of passive income. The former is definitely a possible income source for a PhD who owns her own home.

Further reading: Should I Buy a Home During Grad School?

If you don’t have money up front, you can “invest” your time and talent into a product that people will buy over time. The classic example of that type is an author who is paid a royalty with each book sale.

The current fad incarnation of passive investing is a promise that you can “make money while you sleep!” through online business, generally selling previously created digital products. (I do this in my business.) However, almost no online business runs for long without input of time and labor. The upside for a graduate student or postdoc, however, is that the large time investment needed up front to generate passive income and the maintenance over the long term can generally be performed on your own schedule and under the radar.

Examples of PhD side hustles that are passive income:

  • Writing (i.e., published author)
  • Patent holder (licensed)
  • Digital products
    • Flash cards and ebook (Alex)
    • Courses
  • Investing for current income
  • Landlording

Video Series: How to Increase Your Income as a Graduate Student

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Balancing Your Side Hustle with Your PhD Work

Figuring out how to make money and settling into a groove of earning a side income can be exciting. It can even be more gratifying at times than your research as research is basically a series of failures punctuated by occasional successes. In those weeks and month when nothing is going right in your research, being able to turn to an activity with a known outcome ($$!) can be a welcome relief. However, you should not forget why you are pursuing the side hustle in the first place: to finish your PhD and pursue a certain career. (Of course, your side hustle may spur you to leave your program, but only do so after serious reflection! It shouldn’t be about the side hustle per se but a carefully considered evolution of your career plans.)

To that end, there are a few strategies you can use to make sure your side hustle complements and does not compete with your primary role:

1) Track Your Time

Set weekly limits for yourself on the amount of time you will spend on your role as a graduate student or postdoc vs. on your side hustle. If your time spent side hustling creeps too high or your time spent on research dips too low, you know you need to readjust. Expect your weekly time goals to change throughout the seasons of your PhD training.

2) Set Geographic and/or Temporal Boundaries

It’s best if you conduct your side hustle in a different location than your primary PhD workspace; for example, you could work from home on your side hustle and never in your office or on campus. An alternative to geographic boundaries is temporal boundaries, such as never working on your side hustle during daytime working hours. The exact boundaries you set will depend heavily on the nature of both your PhD work and your side hustle.

3) Choose a Flexible Side Hustle

An ideal side hustle for a PhD is one that can be accomplished from anywhere at any time and ramped up or down depending on how busy you are with your research. This is not realistic for all side hustles, but the more axes of flexibility yours has the better it will complement your primary job.

4) Keep Your Side Hustle Quiet (If Possible)

An internship or professional fellowship that requires time away from your graduate program or postdoc obviously can’t be kept secret, but many other side hustles can fly under the radar of your advisor and department if you want them to. The seriousness of the possible repercussions or how “frowned upon” side hustling is should dictate how open you are about your pursuit. Keep in mind that a side hustle in your current field of research may very well get back to your advisor as communities are quite small, so in that case it may be better to be completely above board.

Best Financial Practices for Your Side Hustle

Most side hustles are independent contractor or self-employment positions, which means that you become an entrepreneur (or solopreneur) of a kind. There are some common best practices in self-employment you should put in place from the start of your side hustle.

Further reading:

1) Use a Separate Business Checking Account

Separating your personal transactions from your business transactions at the account level will help you keep track of exactly how much money you are earning after expenses and what is deductible on your tax return. You can make periodic transfers from your business account to your personal account to pay yourself.

2) Set Aside Money for Tax Payments (Quarterly or Annually)

Your PhD side hustle generates (potentially) taxable income, subject not only to income tax but also in many cases self-employment tax. Add your marginal tax brackets at the federal, state, and local levels together with the FICA tax you must pay, and set aside that fraction of each of your side hustle paychecks to ultimately pay the extra tax. If you earn enough in your side hustle compared to your primary job, you eventually will need to start paying quarterly estimated tax. Fellowship recipients who don’t have automatic tax withholding are already familiar with this process. Even if you aren’t required to pay quarterly, expect a larger year-end tax bill.

Further reading: The Complete Guide to Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients

3) Give your Earnings a Job

The best way to ensure you don’t blow your side income is to assign it a job to be completed as soon as it hits your personal account. You could pay a specific bill or two with your side income or only allow yourself certain indulgences from your side income. For example, Jenni saved her side hustle earnings for travel.

Closing Advice and Thoughts from PhD Side Hustlers

“Honestly, it kept me sane to have other things going on… [They] helped me to finish my dissertation more quickly because I was more focused on the time I had, instead of having lots of unstructured time to work.” – Kathayoon

“I’d encourage graduate students to pursue a lot of different opportunities while in school, even ones that are at a slant from what they usually do. It’s easy to get tunnel vision as a grad student, but if you open yourself up, you can develop really useful skills while reinvigorating your academic work.” – Derek

“I definitely recommend finding something in grad school that’s unrelated to the work you do, monetized or not, so that if all your experiments fail one week, you still have something meaningful to throw yourself into.” – Shannon

“This experience was critical for my transition out of graduate school. I ended up getting a full-time offer at the same company after maybe 2 months of hourly work and have been there for almost 2 years now. The best part was that I had an opportunity to try out my job before starting full-time. How else do you know if you want to launch a career in a certain field?” – Adam

How to Find, Apply for, and Win a Fellowship During Your PhD or Postdoc

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Applying for fellowships is an essential component of your PhD training. My fellowship application advice is to apply for a few relevant fellowships as a prospective PhD student, whether you are coming from an undergraduate degree, master’s degree, job, or other fellowship. It’s also a great idea to keep applying for fellowships and grants throughout your PhD and postdoc for any years when you’re not already a fellow.

The advice in this article is on why, where, and how to apply for fellowships successfully. It has a particular focus on outside fellowships that are portable (you can use them at any institution), remunerative (they provide at least stipend/salary support), and broad (many research fields are eligible).

Fellowships at the graduate level are similar to scholarships at the undergraduate level in that they are awards that are given based on merit, and sometimes only a narrow slice of students is eligible. They are “free money” similar to scholarships and grants in the sense that they do not have to be repaid. What is different is that fellowships typically pay part or all of a PhD student or postdoc’s stipend/salary and may also include some money for tuition and fees. However, as a fellow you do have the responsibility of making progress in your research or else your fellowship is not likely to be renewed. PhD-level fellows are free to focus their attention solely on their research (in addition to classes in the early stage of training).

Further Reading:

fellowship

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Why Apply for Fellowships

Regularly applying for outside funding is an expectation in graduate school (and often before and after) that should be made more explicit. Even if you are fully funded by your program or group, you will benefit from applying for fellowships throughout your PhD and postdoc. The only reason to forgo submitting at least one fellowship application in a given year is if you are already funded by an outside fellowship in the upcoming year.

Further Reading: Why You Should Apply for Fellowships Even If You’re Fully Funded

There are numerous reasons apply for fellowships regularly, some of which apply even if you don’t ultimately win a fellowship.

1) A Higher Stipend/Salary

Often, outside fellowships are structured to pay a higher stipend than what is typically paid to a graduate student or postdoc. This is especially true for the prestigious, competitive, national fellowships. Winning an outside fellowship that awards a higher stipend/salary is one of the very few ways a graduate student or postdoc can secure a significant raise within the same career stage. Even if the fellowship pays a stipend/salary lower than the baseline amount for the department, typically the department will supplement the fellowship stipend/salary up to or even above the baseline pay as a gesture of appreciation to the student or postdoc for winning the fellowship.

2) Greater Independence

Depending on the PhD’s stage and department, an outside fellowship may confer an increased degree of research independence. For example, a fellow may be able to set up a new collaboration, pursue a side project, or complete additional lab rotations when a graduate student funded by another means would not be given permission. This is because the fellow’s funding is not tied to working on any specific project the way a grant would specify.

3) Negotiation Power

Virtually all PhD students and many postdocs assume there is no room for negotiation in their funding package. However, there are two points at which negotiation is possible: Upon admission to a program and upon winning an outside fellowship (best if combined). If you are funding yourself through a fellowship, that’s money that your advisor/department does not have to spend on you (assuming they would have), and that money has now been freed up for other purposes.

After finding out that you have won a fellowship, you can tactfully ask your advisor or department chair if it is possible for you to receive an extra benefit. You could ask for an increase in pay, a one-time or yearly bonus, or one of the extra degrees of independence listed above.

4) Excused from Work

One aspect of PhD funding that is not necessarily widely discussed is the difference between being funded by a fellowship and being funded by an assistantship.

A research assistant, teaching assistant, or graduate assistant is virtually always an employee of her university (as well as a student). You can be sure of this status if you receive a W-2 at tax time. The graduate student’s stipend or salary is being paid for work she does: teaching, research, or another type of service.

A fellowship, on the other hand, is an award, and there is not supposed to be any work requirement tied to it, although in practice the PhD student must of course make adequate degree progress.

There is not much of a functional day-to-day difference between graduate students funded by research assistantships in which the research is included in their dissertations and graduate students funded by fellowships. In both cases, 100% of the graduate student’s time (less time spent completing courses) can be devoted to his dissertation.

However, being funded by a fellowship makes an enormous difference in the day-to-day life of a graduate student who would otherwise be funded by an assistantship that requires non-dissertation-related work. That work requirement is typically 20 hours per week. Winning a fellowship excuses the graduate student from that work requirement, meaning that 20 hours per week can be devoted to research that furthers the student’s degree progress. This might very well shorten the time it takes for the student to complete his PhD.

5) CV-Booster

One of the unsung but most important benefits of winning a fellowship, particularly a prestigious national fellowship, is its effect on your CV. Once one fellowship committee has deemed you worthy of funding, that stands as a testament to your ability that is seen by every subsequent funding committee. Winning your first fellowship gives you momentum toward career success. Assuming you continue to be an excellent candidate, winning subsequent fellowships and grants becomes more likely.

6) Shows Initiative/Effort

In my opinion, applying for at least one outside fellowship concurrently with applying for graduate school is an unspoken requirement. Being able to say on your grad school application or in your interviews that you have applied for outside funding (even if you don’t ultimately win) shows the faculty members reviewing your application that you take initiative and are ambitious. Even once you are settled into a department and group in grad school, attempting to fund yourself will almost certainly be viewed favorably by your advisor, even if you are not awarded a fellowship.

7) Applying Forces You to Frame and Justify Your Research

Writing a fellowship application can be a wonder pause and possibly reset point in your research progress. You have to step back from your day-to-day work, think about the underlying motivations and aspirations for your project, and explain why they (and you) are worth being funded. This exercise alone is likely to benefit your research and experimental design.

8) Good Practice

The final benefit of applying for fellowships is that it’s good practice. If you stay in academia or research long-term, applying for grants is likely to become part of your regular work rhythm. You may as well start early, gain experience, and hone your message.

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When to Apply for Fellowships

Most fellowship application deadlines are in the fall, though a few occur at other points in the academic year. Over each summer, you should create a list of the fellowships you plan to apply for in the upcoming academic year, including ones with deadlines later in the year. Create calendar reminders leading up to each fellowship deadline to ensure that your applications stay on track.

Where to Find Fellowship Opportunities

Your first stop for finding fellowship opportunities should be your research and/or program advisor (postdoc, graduate, or undergraduate). Ask him or her what fellowships you should consider applying to and what fellowships other students and postdocs at your same stage apply to. You can also ask your peers which fellowships they have applied to in the past or are applying to now.

Another great place to look are websites that maintain databases of fellowship opportunities. Your university or department may cultivate such a list. In the next section, I have provided my own list of broad fellowships to consider. Other great databases can be found at:

Finally, try a simple Google search with keyword combinations of “fellowship” or “scholarship” along with anything particular to you, such as your field, research interests, career stage, demographics, standout qualities, etc. You may find a fellowship or scholarship that is tailored to you that your peers wouldn’t qualify for and therefore overlooked.

When looking for fellowship descriptions and listings, always consider both the large, well-known programs that fund a lot of fellows and lesser-known opportunities that may be a good match for you in particular, either because of your demographics or your research area. All of the advantages of fellowship funding apply to both types.

Fellowship Programs for Graduate Students and Postdocs

Below is a list of portable fellowship programs that are granted to a large number of fellows each year in a broad array of fields. These fellowships provide full or nearly full levels of stipend/salary support, often in addition to tuition and fees.

American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowships

  • Website
  • Fields: All
  • Eligibility: US citizen or permanent residents; current PhD students who will complete their dissertations between April 1 and June 30, 2020
  • Award: $20,000
  • Number of Awards: Not specified
  • Deadline: 11/1/2018

Department of Defense Science, Mathematics & Research for Transformation (SMART)

  • Website
  • Fields: Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Biosciences, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Cognitive, Neural, and Behavioral Sciences, Computer and Computational Sciences and Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Geosciences, Industrial and Systems Engineering (technical tracks only), Information Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Oceanography, Operations Research (technical tracks only), Physics
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current graduate students able to accept internships and one year of post-graduation employment with the DoD for each year of support
  • Award: 1-5 years of support; $25,000-38,000/year stipend, full tuition and fees, $1,200 health insurance allowance, $1,000 miscellaneous supplies allowance
  • Number of Awards: 65 to PhD students in 2018
  • Deadline: 12/1/2018

Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF)

  • Website
  • Fields: Broad STEM as long as applicant uses mathematics or computers
  • Eligibility: Prospective and first-year PhD students
  • Award: up to 4 years of support; $36,000/year stipend, full tuition and fees, academic allowance of $5,000 in the first year and $1,000 per year following
  • Number of Awards: not stated (there are ~80 current fellows)
  • Deadline: not yet announced; previous cycle was 1/17/2018

Ford Foundation Dissertation

  • Website
  • Fields: American studies, anthropology, archaeology, art and theater history, astronomy, chemistry, communications, computer science, cultural studies, earth sciences, economics, engineering, ethnic studies, ethnomusicology, geography, history, international relations, language, life sciences, linguistics, literature, mathematics, performance study, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, urban planning, and women’s studies; interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs and other interdisciplinary programs
  • Eligibility: Current PhD students who will complete their dissertations in the 2019-2020 academic year; US citizens, nationals, permanent residents, and DACA recipients; Alaska Natives (Aleut, Eskimo, or other Indigenous People of Alaska), Black/African Americans, Mexican Americans/Chicanas/Chicanos, Native American Indians, Native Pacific Islanders (Hawaiian/Polynesian/Micronesian), Puerto Ricans
  • Award: 1 year of support; $25,000/year stipend
  • Number of Awards: ~36
  • Deadline: 12/6/2018

Ford Foundation Postdoctoral

  • Website
  • Fields: American studies, anthropology, archaeology, art and theater history, astronomy, chemistry, communications, computer science, cultural studies, earth sciences, economics, engineering, ethnic studies, ethnomusicology, geography, history, international relations, language, life sciences, linguistics, literature, mathematics, performance study, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, urban planning, and women’s studies; interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs and other interdisciplinary programs
  • Eligibility: Individuals who completed or will complete their PhDs or ScDs between 12/6/2011 and 12/6/2018; US citizens, nationals, permanent residents, and DACA recipients; Alaska Natives (Aleut, Eskimo, or other Indigenous People of Alaska), Black/African Americans, Mexican Americans/Chicanas/Chicanos, Native American Indians, Native Pacific Islanders (Hawaiian/Polynesian/Micronesian), Puerto Ricans
  • Award: 1 year of support; $45,000/year stipend
  • Number of Awards: ~24
  • Deadline: 12/6/2018

Ford Foundation Predoctoral

  • Website
  • Fields: Biological & Biomedical Sciences, Ecological, Environmental, & Evolutionary Sciences, Education, Engineering, History, Interdisciplinary Study (Social Sciences & Humanities), Literature & Languages, Performance Studies, Communication, & Art History, Philosophy & Religious Studies, Physical Sciences, Mathematics, & Computer Science, Psychology, Social Sciences, Social/Cultural Anthropology, and Archaeology, Sociology
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current PhD students with at least 3 years of study remaining; US citizens, nationals, permanent residents, and DACA recipients; Alaska Natives (Aleut, Eskimo, or other Indigenous People of Alaska), Black/African Americans, Mexican Americans/Chicanas/Chicanos, Native American Indians, Native Pacific Islanders (Hawaiian/Polynesian/Micronesian), Puerto Ricans
  • Award: 3 years of support; $24,000/year stipend
  • Number of Awards: ~70
  • Deadline: 12/13/2018

Hertz Foundation

  • Website
  • Fields: Applied physical, biological, and engineering sciences or mathematics
  • Eligibility: Prospective and first-year PhD students
  • Award: Up to 5 years of support; $34,000/year stipend and full tuition
  • Number of Awards: Unspecified; 1,200 in the history of the program
  • Deadline: 10/24/2018

Life Sciences Research Foundation

  • Website
  • Fields: Life sciences
  • Eligibility: PhD or MD recipients (awarded less than 5 years ago); US citizens working in any geographic location and non-US citizens working in US laboratories
  • Award: 3 years of support; $52,000/year for salary and $10,000/year for research
  • Number of Awards: 15-25
  • Deadline: 10/1/2018

National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG)

  • Website
  • Fields: Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering; Biosciences; Chemical Engineering; Chemistry; Civil Engineering; Cognitive, Neural, and Behavioral Sciences; Computer and Computational Sciences; Electrical Engineering; Geosciences; Materials Science and Engineering; Mathematics; Mechanical Engineering; Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering; Oceanography; Physics
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current (first or second year) PhD students; US citizens
  • Award: 3 years of support; $3,200/month in stipend, up to $1,200/year in health insurance, and full tuition and fees
  • Number of Awards: ~200 in 2016
  • Deadline: Not yet announced; previous cycle was 12/7/2018

National GEM Consortium

  • Website
  • Fields: Applied science and engineering
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current graduate students; under-represented students (American Indian/Native, African American/Black, Hispanic American/Latino); US citizens or permanent residents
  • Award: $16,000/year stipend (to be supplemented by the university) in the first year and guarantee of full tuition and fees and stipend through the fifth year
  • Number of Awards: ~300 in 2018
  • Deadline: 11/12/2018

National Physical Science Consortium

  • Website
  • Fields: Astronomy, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Materials Science, Mathematical Sciences, Physics, and their subdisciplines, and related engineering fields: Chemical, Computer, Electrical, Environmental, Mechanical
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current graduate students available for two summer internships; US citizens
  • Award: Up to 6 years of support; $20,000/year stipend, full tuition and fees
  • Number of Awards: Varies
  • Deadline: Typically 11/30

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)

  • Website
  • Fields: STEM and STEM education
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current master’s or PhD students (current graduate students can apply only once either in their first or second year)
  • Award: 3 years of support; $34,000/year in stipend, $12,000/year to institution
  • Number of Awards: 1,500
  • Deadline: Between 10/22/2018 and 10/26/2018 depending on field

Paul and Daisy Soros

  • Website
  • Fields: Unrestricted
  • Eligibility: Prospective and current (first or second year) graduate students; immigrants and the children of immigrants under age 30
  • Award: 1 or 2 years of support; $25,000/year stipend, 50% of tuition and fees up to $20,000 per year
  • Number of Awards: 30
  • Deadline: 11/1/2018

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How to Create a Winning Fellowship Application

You can’t throw together an excellent fellowship application in a weekend. They take a great deal of time and effort to conceive, write, re-write, and improve with feedback. Below are the steps you must follow to submit a potentially winning fellowship application.

1) Find Fellowships that Are a Good Match for You

You will dramatically increase your odds of winning a fellowship if you are selective about which ones you apply to. Don’t waste time applying to fellowship programs that have been cultivated for candidates with characteristics or research interests that you don’t share or for which you are unambiguously unqualified.

2) Read the Fellowship Application Components and Prompts Carefully

It may seem like all fellowship applications are similar, but there are actually overt or subtle differences among them. Most if not all fellowship programs will want to hear about your research or research interests (research statement) and also about you personally (personal statement), but the particular aspects of each that they are looking for may differ. It’s vital to fully answer the specific prompts for each different application. Make it easy for the evaluators to confirm that you have addressed every component of their rubrics, e.g., intellectual merit and broader impacts (for the NSF GRFP), career aspirations, etc.

You may be able to use similar points and even prose across your fellowship applications, but each application statement must be carefully tailored.

Early on, it’s also important to identify the various non-statement components of the fellowship application so you can gather them without rushing. These components may include letters of recommendation, test scores, and transcripts.

You may be required to receive your current university’s permission (nomination) to apply for a fellowship, so you need to be aware of the requirements and deadline for applying for that pre-selection stage.

3) Select and Notify the Writers of Your Letters of Recommendation

Give the writers of your letters of recommendation plenty of notice regarding the fellowship applications you request that they submit to (at least a couple months). It is helpful to share with them a spreadsheet or similar in which you can list all the different applications, their due dates, and submission links for each application season.

Different fellowship applications may require different types of letter writers, so you may need to reach out to faculty members or other mentors who are not your primary research advisors for one application or another.

Give faculty members who have never written you a letter of recommendation in the past an extra-long period of time to prepare the letter and offer to meet with them to discuss your application.

4) Begin Drafting Your Fellowship Application Materials Well in Advance of the Deadline

Once you are finished preparing, it’s time to start writing. Again, writing well in advance of the application deadline is imperative. You need to give yourself time for high-quality research, reflection, and crafting. Finish a draft, walk away from it for a few days or a week, and then come back with fresh eyes. At any stage you may ask for feedback: outline, sketchy draft, full draft, or the I-think-it’s-complete draft.

5) Write for the Proper Audience

As with any piece of writing, it’s vital to write for a certain audience. In the case of fellowship applications, you must understand, possibly by reading between the lines, what the evaluators of the fellowship applications are looking for. This is not to say that you will simply tell them what they want to hear, but rather that you will highlight the specific components of your application that you know they have to or want to see included. You should also use language that the evaluator will understand, which likely does not include obscure jargon.

6) Seek Input from Advisors, Peers, and Past Winners

To create a competitive fellowship application, you need outside eyes and expertise. You can get feedback and tips from:

1. Your Research and/or Academic Advisor(s)

Your undergraduate or graduate advisor is the best person to read your statements and give you feedback from his or her perspective as a career researcher who has advised other fellowship applicants and winners. He or she may even be overseeing the project you have proposed in your application, in which case the feedback will be even more specific and useful. Your advisor is likely also writing you a letter of recommendation, so it’s a great idea to give him or her full awareness of what you’re proposing.

2. Other Research and/or Academic Mentors

You may reach out to other faculty or staff members at your current or past institutions to read and provide feedback on your fellowship application. Your university may even designate a specific faculty or staff member as a mentor for certain fellowship applications. Your current institution may hold workshops and seminars to guide you in your applications, which you should make every effort to attend.

3. Your Peers Applying for Fellowships

Forming a reading group for one or more specific fellowship applications is among the most powerful steps you can do to take your application from ordinary to extraordinary. Your group should be composed of your peers of a similar stage and field who are applying to one or more of the same fellowships. You should agree on deadlines for producing outlines and drafts of your statements and read one another’s work at one or more of the stages to help one another improve the ideas and writing therein.

4. Prior Fellowship Winners

You can learn from the past awardees of the fellowships you are applying to. The first network to tap is your personal one: your friends and (older) peers from your college or graduate school who have previously won the fellowship you are applying to. You can also search for advice from fellowship winners online. Ask these winners to share their tips with you, in particular anything that is unique to that one fellowship. Some past winners may even share their statements with you as a model, but if you do read them be quite careful to avoid even inadvertent plagiarism.

7) Finalize Your Fellowship Application

Once you have incorporated the feedback you receive from your mentors and peers, it’s time to finalize your statements and application. Follow all formatting specifications precisely, and even beyond that format your statements so that they are easy to for the evaluators to read.

Be sure to proofread the final version of your statements carefully. While you can complete this step yourself, it is probably even better to ask a friend or family member who has not yet read your statement to go through it with fresh eyes to catch any grammatical, spelling, or formatting mistakes. You might even be able to use your university’s writing center for this step.

Again, don’t wait to the last minute to load your application materials into the application portal. Do this a couple of days in advance of the deadline so you can be sure you have prepared all the materials properly. Finally, you’re ready to submit!

The main advice in this section is to give your application plenty of time and careful attention and to ask for feedback from anyone willing to give it to you!

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How to Be an Excellent Fellowship Applicant

This last subject is arguably the most important one of this entire article. Submitting a large number of marvelously written fellowship applications will not propel a weak applicant to success. That is to say, prior to and concurrently with searching out and applying for fellowships, you should also take steps to increase your strength as an applicant.

Of course, fellowships vary in what they look for in a candidate. But there are commonalities:

  • Research experience with demonstrated results and/or deliverables (e.g., papers, posters, presentations, patents).
  • High grades and test scores.
  • Strong and detailed letters of recommendation.
  • Community service.
  • Stand-out experiences.
  • Career commitment to research, teaching, service, etc. (whatever is in line with the ideals of the fellowship program)

It’s a great idea to keep track of accomplishment or activity you participate in throughout your college years and beyond with a few annotations about your contributions to draw upon when preparing fellowship applications.

At the end of the day, what makes you an excellent fellowship applicant has a great deal of overlap with what makes you an excellent undergraduate or graduate student or postdoc, effective researcher, and personable individual. Effort you put toward making yourself a stronger fellowship applicant will benefit many other areas of your life as well.

Serving as a Resident Advisor Freed this Graduate Student from Financial Stress

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This episode’s money story features an interview with Adrian Gallo, a PhD student at Oregon State University. Adrian serves as a resident advisor in a fraternity house close to campus. For most of his four years in the role, it was a dream side hustle: high-paying (in defrayed costs), low time commitment, and personally gratifying. However, when the house experienced a calamity, the time he had to spend in the role rocketed up; his research suffered, and he had to have difficult conversations with his advisor. We discuss the pros and cons of side hustles generally and resident advisor roles in particular, including how this side hustle frees Adrian from the financial stress some of his peers experience.

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resident advisor

0:00 Introduction

1:06 Please Introduce Yourself

Adrian Gallo is a fifth year at Oregon State studying carbon cycling. He also hosts a radio show, Inspiration Dissemination, which interviews grad students about research and their path to grad school.

2:45 What is the scope of your role as a resident advisor?

Adrian started as a resident advisor concurrently with starting grad school. His contractual obligations are minimal: he is a liaison between undergraduates and landlords and responsible for dealing with big-picture items, such as replacing appliances.

The role is in a fraternity house; Adrian is also a member from his undergraduate years. He knew the possibility for growth inherent in participating in this fraternity, so he decided to also serve as a mentor to the fraternity members. He helps with big-picture planning such as five-year goals.

The time commitment of the role fluctuates throughout the academic year and has also varied year-to-year. When the fraternity leadership was running well, Adrian didn’t do as much, but he became more involved when it was warranted.

On average, the time commitment of the position is 2-3 hours per week, which includes two hour-long meetings. Typically, he chats with the kitchen manager or house director as well a few times. On the ‘big’ weeks, the job has taken 20+ hours.

7:33 What pay and/or benefits do you receive for the role?

Adrian doesn’t pay rent (the average rent in Corvalis is $500 to $700+) and lives very close to campus so it is quite convenient to get to and from campus. He has two bedrooms in the fraternity house (one serves as his office) and his own washer/dryer. Utilities and a parking spot are included.

He also receives food service during the academic year: breakfast, lunch, and dinner five days per week. He can get to and from the house and eat a pre-prepared meal in just an hour lunch break. This is an amazing degree of time savings.

10:09 How did you land this resident advisor position?

Adrian initially inquired with the local fraternity chapter about finding a place to live and a roommate. Instead, they offered him the resident advisor position, which he though was outlandish. He was nervous about living in a fraternity house with approximately 50 college students. However, after a few phone conversations, he decided to give the position a try for a year. After one year in the position, he realized he really enjoyed the role and had found a home.

13:41 How do you make sure you’re fulfilling the expectations of you as a graduate student while holding this side position?

At first, there was no problem as the time commitment was so low.

Last year, 10 rooms in the house flooded and the floors had to be removed. The damage was so extensive that it couldn’t be fixed right away, which deprived everyone of sleep and wore them down.

Adrian had to spend significant time dealing with contractors (all day on the phone) and contacting the landlords, which kept him out of the lab for some time. He wishes he had asked for help from the student leadership in dealing with this situation much earlier as the time management was so difficult.

17:00 Did you let your advisor and co-workers know what was going on during the house disaster?

For about a week and a half, Adrian wasn’t at work and finally his advisor initiated a conversation with him about what was going on, at which point Adrian filled him in. He wishes he had been more forthcoming.

Adrian’s advisor knew about the position and that he was able to balance the roles well for the first two years. His advisor started to question whether the resident advisor role was compatible with Adrian’s role as a graduate student.

Ultimately the floor repair took approximately 2.5 months. Adrian learned more than he ever expected to about working with contractors, repairs, etc. The time commitment was very intense at the beginning but tapered over time.

22:22 How did you decide to stay in the resident advisor role and also convince your advisor that it was a good idea?

Adrian finds witnessing and facilitating the growth of the undergraduate fraternity members so fulfilling that he didn’t seriously consider resigning his position. Another job wouldn’t compare to the resident advisor role.

25:10 Have you received any additional intangible benefits aside from the mentorship that you’ve found fulfilling?

Staying in close contact with the undergraduates helps Adrian in his teaching role because he can make relevant references, which his students find engaging.

27:28 What might cause you to resign this position?

Adrian had second thoughts about the position during the flooding situation, particularly because he couldn’t sleep in the house with the soundproofing missing. The sleep deprivation really got to him; he couldn’t think or work well.

30:30 Do you think you’ll continue with the role even through writing your dissertation?

Adrian already has written his master’s thesis while in the resident advisor role and actually found it helpful to live in the fraternity house. He would come out of his office mentally exhausted and find refreshment in the escape of interacting with the undergraduates. This approach isn’t for everyone, but it worked well for Adrian.

33:28 How has your role as a resident advisor affected your finances?

Adrian paid off his student loans from his undergraduate degree and bought a car. He bought a nice mountain bike, which bring him a lot of joy and health benefits.

The chief intangible benefit is that he doesn’t have to feel concerned about his finances. Many of his friends have to budget very tightly to make it on their stipends. In contrast, Adrian can absorb unexpected expenses without worrying.

As an undergraduate paying his way through college, Adrian found concern about finances to be a constant cloud over his head, but it’s not something he experiences any longer thanks to his side hustle. The resident advisor role frees Adrian from the constant cloud of financial stress in exchange for (usually) only a few hours per week.

The benefits of this role have on balance been very much worth the time put in, even though he went through the tough period during the renovation. Thankfully, his advisor was ultimately supportive.

Resident advising is a great solution to the problem of insufficient stipends, and often comes with the side benefit of mentoring students.

41:15 Final comments

There are a few other graduate students serving as resident advisors to the fraternities and sororities, including two who had not previously been involved in the Greek system. A social scientist might find it very interesting, and in fact the person who held the role prior to Adrian used observations from her resident advisor role in her dissertation.

Try serving as a resident advisor out! Being willing to experiment with this role has enabled Adrian to make significant financial progress during graduate school. What’s the worst that could happen by saying “yes” for a year?

Undergraduates are worth getting to know as well (networking)!

36:40 Conclusion

Video Series: How to Increase Your Income as a Graduate Student

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