To benefit both their current work and their future career prospects, students are strongly encouraged to seek funding from external agencies through grants and fellowships. These awards, sponsored by both public and private agencies, confer distinction on a student who wins an award in a national competition. Students must report to the Office of Financial Aid any scholarship or fellowship received from an outside agency or organization.

Stipends provided to Ph.D. students by the graduate school are intended to be a form of financial aid. As such, external fellowships which support student stipends will replace the Yale stipend. As an incentive to pursue external funding, students will be permitted to combine their external fellowships with a portion of Yale’s financial support as described below. Alternatively, students in a teaching year may replace the Yale stipend and accompanying teaching commitment with an external fellowship, subject to the conditions described below. 

Grants, awards, prizes, or fellowships which support non-stipend expenses (research, equipment, travel) are not subject to the Combined Award Policy and may be held concurrently with a Yale stipend. If external support includes both a stipend and a non-stipend component, only the stipend component is used for the purpose of calculating the combined award.

Combining external support with the Yale stipend

Students receiving external awards may combine the outside award with a university stipend. These combined awards are capped at a level equal to the department or program stipend plus $4,000. Students will first receive the full value of the external fellowship, and the university will then provide supplemental support, up to a cap of $4,000 above the department or program stipend. The university supplement will come from either a research assistantship, university fellowship, or teaching fellowship, depending on the financial support remaining from the student’s financial package awarded at the time of admission. The total value of the combined award will be pro-rated for fellowships awarded for less than one year.  If the external fellowship stipend exceeds the department or program stipend, but is less than the combined award cap (stipend plus $4,000), the graduate school will provide the difference, up to the combined award cap. In this case, the top-up will not count against the financial aid package offered at admission. If the external fellowship stipend exceeds the value of the combined award cap, the recipient will retain the full external fellowship funding and will receive no university supplement.

No university support may be deferred beyond the end of the sixth year.

External fellowship combined with teaching fellowships

Students who wish to combine their external fellowship with a year of university teaching support awarded at the time of admission may do so, with the following provisions:

1. If the annual value of the external fellowship, plus the value of the teaching at current teaching rates, exceeds the standard stipend, students may waive one term of teaching and still receive the full value of the combined award (e.g., if the stipend is $50,000, and a student with an external award equaling $30,000 is expected to teach two TF-20s at $11,000 per course, the total value of the award and the teaching equals $52,000). Since this exceeds the stipend, the student may waive one term of financial teaching and still receive the full value of the combined award ($54,000). However, teaching that is part of an academic requirement may not be waived. The teaching to be waived may be concurrent with the fellowship or a future term of teaching. One term of teaching may be waived for each year of fellowship support.
2. If a student has only teaching fellowships remaining in their financial aid package, and they win an external fellowship that requires them to be in residence at a site away from Yale such that it is not possible to teach, the university will provide a supplement to the fellowship up to the standard stipend. This benefit will apply only to fellowships that support at least 50 percent of the standard stipend. Please note that this benefit applies only to residential fellowships that require a student’s presence at a particular institution, not to standard research or travel grants that may allow a student to travel abroad for field work. 

Replacing the Yale stipend with external support

Students who wish to reduce their financial teaching obligation may accept an external award in lieu of university support. Students who choose this option will not receive any stipend from Yale for the term or year in which they are not teaching. However, students may not reduce teaching that is an academic requirement unless the Ph.D. program guidelines specifically allow this.

If a fellowship provides stipend support for the summer, and the student has a guarantee of only five summers of support from Yale, the student may choose to forfeit the combined award over the summer and instead defer the university support to their sixth summer. No university support may be deferred beyond the end of the sixth year.

Fellowship budgets

In rare cases, students may win a fellowship whose terms state that the university may not reduce its financial aid package to the student, in contradiction of this Combined Award Policy. If such an award allows students to designate some portion of the award for travel, supplies, or research expenses that would not be considered stipend, students are required to submit a fellowship budget that, to the degree possible, complies with the Combined Award Policy. In order to maximize the amount of stipend that a fellow receives, no more than $4,000 per year should be designated for stipend support (unless they are designating additional stipend support for an unfunded summer, as described in the previous paragraph), and the remaining fellowship award should be budgeted for non-stipend purposes. This will allow a fellow to receive the maximum stipend allowed under the Combined Award Policy, and to use the rest of the fellowship for travel and research. Such budgets, if not already required and approved by the funding agency, will require approval of the dean. This budget should be submitted to the Financial Aid Office along with the notice of award. In these cases, if the fellowship funds are awarded to the university, they will be paid out to the student based on the approved budget. If the funds are awarded directly to the student, the student is expected to use the funds as designated in the budget.