Financial Aid

The Financial Aid Office awards needs-based financial aid to graduate students. To apply, students file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) which will be made available in December for the following year. Eligible students must be in good standing, enrolled in five credits or more, and making satisfactory academic progress. For more information, please visit the Financial Aid Office website: http://financialaid.ucsc.edu/index.html

Campus Fellowships

A variety of university fellowships may be awarded at the time of admission. These include fee and tuition fellowships and some outright grants of fellowship funding. The value of these fellowships varies according to student need and available funding.

Teaching Assistantships

Whenever possible, the department makes Teaching Assistantships available to graduate students. Teaching Assistants (TA's) receive a stipend of $7091/quarter (for 2018-19). In addition, the registration fees, educational fees, and the entire cost of health insurance are paid by the university in the quarter a student TAs.

Extramural Fellowships

Graduate students in the department have an extraordinarily successful record of gaining National Science Foundation dissertation fellowships. Faculty will advise in the preparation of these applications which can be accessed directly from the NSF.

The Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education invites applications for the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program for graduate study in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Approximately $1.8 million is available; the department expects to grant 43 new awards at an estimated average amount of $43,293. Applications are due in early October.

More information can be found at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2008-08-15/pdf/E8-18972.pdf

A wide range of information on extramural funding opportunities, both governmental and private, is available through the Community of Science (COS), a subscriber-based service available to UCSC graduate students.

Information on these and other sources of extramural funding is posted on the bulletin board outside the department office and forwarded to anthropology graduate students via email.

In-Candidacy Fee Offset Grant (ICFOG)

Students advanced to candidacy (typically this happens by the end of the third year) are eligible for these grants prior to the conclusion of their 12th quarter of full-time (registered) graduate study. Once qualified, students are automatically entitled to three academic quarters of ICFOG fee reductions. After three quarters, students submitting a dissertation prospectus and a plan of completion, signed by the dissertation director, to the Graduate Division will receive three more quarters of ICFOG. Two additional quarters will be paid upon a student's submission to the Graduate Division of a signed dissertation, provided that this occurs prior to the conclusion of the student's 10th quarter of registration following advancement to candidacy.

No student may receive more than nine quarters of ICFOG. Currently, ICFOG is an approximate $403 per quarter grant. Students do not apply for these grants. They are awarded by the Graduate Division upon a student's attainment of eligibility and are dependent upon the availability of funding.

Other Fee Reductions

Once a student has advanced to candidacy they may choose to apply for Part-time status which reduces their fees by about half. When they go out into the field to do research that takes them out of the state of California they may further reduce fees by approximately $632 per quarter by applying for In-Absentia status. Another option is to apply for Leave of Absence and pay no fees for a maximum of 3 quarters in a row. Then the student can enroll for one quarter and go back on Leave of Absence. Doing this may make certain loans come due as the student is not enrolled.

Research and Travel Grants

First-year Anthropology graduate students may request funds for travel, living expenses, fees and/or research related expenses for ethnographic field research, language learning, or other activity which substantially contributes to completion of the ethnographic writing requirement, language requirement, or otherwise to preparation for the Qualifying Examinations or dissertation research. Funding normally is for projects carried out during the summer.

All Anthropology graduate students may request travel funds to attend professional conferences to present papers and to visit research sites and for other travel related to the student's preparation for the Qualifying Examinations or dissertation. Funding is for travel during the current academic year and summer.

International Students

International students are generally eligible for Teaching Assistantships after proving English language competency.  

International students should consider applying for extramural support as they apply for admission. Some countries offer fellowship opportunities to students studying abroad.  This is especially important for first-year funding for non-resident tuition.  Non-resident tuition for international students can be waived in years 2 and 3.  After advancing to candidacy, typically in year 3, international students are eligible for a 3-year non-resident tuition waiver.  Thus, international students may have 5 years of non-resident tuition waivers.  A limited number of first-year non-resident tuition fellowships are available.  All international applicants are considered for these fellowships at the time of application.

Wadsworth International Fellowship

The Wenner-Gren Foundation has a fellowship designed to support international students from selected countries. http://www.wennergren.org/programs/wadsworth-international-fellowships

Fulbright Program for International Students

Fulbright also has a program for international students.

http://foreign.fulbrightonline.org/

UC MEXUS-CONACYT Doctoral Fellowship for Mexican Students

Students who are from Mexico are eligible to apply to the UC Mexus/CONACYT Program, which provides up to five years of full funding. http://ucmexus.ucr.edu/funding/prospective-fellows-info/doctoral_prospective.html

For some select students, the university provides a non-resident tuition fellowship that covers the cost of non-resident tuition for two years. For more details concerning international students at UCSC see: http://graddiv.ucsc.edu/prospective-students/intnl-applicants.html