Presidential Fellowships are awarded to exceptional entering graduate students who enroll full time in a doctoral degree program at Florida International University. The fellowships provide $25,000 per twelve months and are for three years. The first year, and either the second or third year, fellowships are provided by the University Graduate School and there are no obligations on the part of the recipient other than to make excellent progress in his or her degree program. In the second or third year, depending on what is pedagogically best in the particular discipline, the home unit of the recipient will provide a 0.5 FTE Graduate Teaching Assistantship of at least $25,000 for the fall, spring, and summer terms. Tuition for Presidential Fellows is paid by the University Graduate School.

Students awarded Presidential Fellowships are expected to be strong competitors for Dissertation Fellowships in their fourth year. Thus strong applicants should be confident of receiving four years of support with only one of those years requiring any specific service in exchange for the support.

Requirements:

Entering graduate students receiving Presidential Fellowships must have either:

1) GRE scores (Verbal plus Quantitative) of at least 1300 or GMAT Composite scores of at least 640; or

2) GRE scores at least 300 points or GMAT composite scores at least 140 points above a three-year running average of scores of entering doctoral students awarded Graduate Assistantships.

Because this program is designed to attract extremely well qualified students to FIU, students already enrolled are ineligible.

Expectations:

Mean time to receipt of degree will decrease by at least one semester for Presidential Fellows compared to the departmental three year average for students supported on a normal assistantship.

Presidential Fellows will have submitted at least one first-authored manuscript to a national peer-reviewed journal prior to graduation.

Nomination Procedure:

Nominations are made by the unit (department or school) admitting the student. A unit may submit no more than six nominations. The units must rank nominations.

Conditions:

Presidential Fellows will be subject to an annual review of academic and scholarly progress. The unit must forward the annual review to the University Graduate School for review prior to renewal of the fellowship. The fellowship recipient must enroll full time (9 credits in fall, 9 credits in spring, and 6 credits in summer) in the graduate program.

Deadline:

The deadline for receipt nominations in the University Graduate School is March 6, 2008.