Skip Section Navigation

In addition to the variety of fellowships, scholarships, grants, and awards available from your program, department, college, or the Toulouse Graduate School, nationally competitive scholarships and other extramural funding opportunities can help fund your education and bring you added distinction. UNT’s Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships assists graduate students in identifying and pursuing externally funded research and study opportunities. See also the great information from UNT’s Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships.

Finding Funding Opportunities

Significantly, the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships provides guidance on how to search for external, nationally competitive scholarships and fellowships.

Other important resources for researching and identifying opportunities include:

  • The Pivot database: This is an external database including funding opportunities across academic disciplines and funding agencies from which you can sign up to receive personalized opportunity alerts. To access the database,
  • Be sure to click on create account. Select the option, Use Email Address/Create Password. Do not use Institutional Login Credentials as this will create errors.
  • Use your UNT email address (@unt.edu or @my.unt.edu) when creating the account.
  • Other places to look are those specific to your disciplinary home. If you are, for instance, . If you are a graduate student in art history focusing on eighteenth-century art, you might look at College Art Association, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, or Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture. No matter your field, there is a professional organization out there for you. Review their web content for potential opportunities.
  • Additionally, the Toulouse Graduate School has compiled a list of various external grants and fellowships for students to research.

Completing your Application

While finding the opportunity is an important first step, your next one is to schedule a discussion with your graduate mentor about what you have found. They are best equipped to have a frank conversation with you about the appropriateness of the match and to help you to create a timeline of the work to come. Once you have an application in hand and have the appropriate faculty go-ahead, heed these words of process advice from Associate Dean, Dr. James Duban:

  • Determine the word or “character” limit for each entry;
  • Fill out that response in a Word document, adhering to the word or “character” limit;
  • Place that response beneath a cut-and-paste of the essay prompt (that is, the instructions for that essay), and run that response by your faculty mentor for thematic and stylistic feedback;
  • Incorporate that feedback into your Word document;
  • Cut and paste that revised Word document into an email to james.duban@unt.edu. He is on hand to provide additional feedback in the areas of style and tone.
  • When you, your mentor, and Dr. Duban are satisfied with that Word document, you will undertake the same process for each subsequent entry or essay.
  • After completing each entry this way, you will cut and paste those entries into the appropriate boxes or columns of the formal application. Dr. Duban offers the sage advice never to work on the Internet site until you have completed the essay(s) in Word.
  • Complete the application at least three weeks prior to the deadline and show a copy of the completed application to any person from whom they expect a letter of recommendation. The completed application will give recommenders more to say about you and will also allow them to place their recommendations in the context of the specific scholarship and its expectations. Professors will also interpret the three-week buffer as a welcome gesture of courtesy.