Higher Education

Deadlines and eligibility change yearly. If something here is out of date, let me know.

1. Applying to Graduate School

Application fee waivers

PhD application fee waivers should be more common, but are generally more accesible than one may think. I received fee waivers for 18/19 of the schools I applied to, but I started applying and asking very early (~September). In my experience, waivers tend to come through one of four routes:

• BigTen Alliance FreeApp Fee Waiver Program — BigTen FreeApp lets you apply to fee waiver programs for many great graduate programs with one form (including UChicago).
• Financial hardship request — Most graduate schools have a form, or accept an email to the graduate admissions chair. Some have a limited pool granted first-come, first-served, so request several weeks before the deadline.
• Participation in a qualifying program — McNair Scholars, TRIO programs, Leadership Alliance, SROP, and NSF REU participation often trigger automatic waivers.
• Conference attendance — Many departments waive fees for students who attended SACNAS, ABRCMS, AISES, or NSBP.

Preview & pre-application programs

Free, usually travel-funded programs that bring prospective applicants to campus before they apply. Many include an application fee waiver. Applications typically open in late summer for early-fall events.

• Yale Preview Days — Brings prospective PhD applicants across disciplines to campus in early fall. Yale covers travel within the US and its territories, plus accommodation and meals.
• Princeton Prospective Ph.D. Preview (P3) — Multi-day fall event covering graduate education, faculty meetings, and application guidance. Search "Princeton P3 program" for the current cycle.
• Department open houses — Many astronomy and physics departments run their own fall preview events, announced on department sites and mailing lists rather than anywhere centralized. Start checking in August!

Bridge & pathway programs

• APS Bridge Program — Places students who want a physics PhD but weren't admitted into departments providing additional preparation and mentoring. Open to anyone with a physics or related degree who has completed core coursework and hasn't been admitted to a graduate program. Applications run mid-December through late March, after most PhD decisions are released.
• Cal-Bridge — Partnership across 9 UC, 22 CSU, and California community college campuses for students in physics, astronomy, CS/computer engineering, or math/statistics. Provides scholarships, paired CSU/UC faculty mentoring, tutoring, and a summer research program. Caltech and Arizona, among others, waive application fees for Cal-Bridge scholars.
• Leadership Alliance — Consortium running summer research programs and a national symposium, with graduate school placement support.
• AstroBetter — Diversity Programs wiki — Community-maintained list of bridge, pathway, and pre-application programs in astronomy.

GRE & program requirements

• Most astronomy and astrophysics PhD programs have dropped the physics GRE and the general GRE. Check each program's current policy at the start of your application cycle: spreadsheet of current GRE policies by program

Reading on applying to graduate school

• AstroBetter — Blog and wiki maintained by working astronomers, covering applications, software, conference culture, and the job market.
• Astrobites guides — Written by graduate students; includes guides to applications, the GRE, and choosing programs. Also has great paper summaries of new research on arXiv!

Notes on the process

• Admissions can depend heavily on which faculty have funding in a given year. I would recommend applying to 12-15 programs.
• Funded offers with a stipend are standard in the sciences. Being asked to pay tuition for a science PhD is a HUGE(!!) red flag.
• I'll add more here eventually...

2. Fellowships & Funding

Undergraduate

• Barry Goldwater Scholarship — For sophomores and juniors planning research careers in science, math, or engineering. Institutionally nominated (internal campus deadlines can be months before the national one)
• Rhodes / Marshall — Funded graduate study in the UK, applied for in senior year. Both require institutional endorsement.
• APS / SWE — Discipline-specific undergraduate awards in physics and engineering.

Graduate

• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) — Three years of support for your PhD, allowing you more flexibility to choose your own research projects. Open to college seniors and early graduate students. Eligibility rules have changed in recent cycles!
• DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship — Four years of support for computational science students, including a required practicum at a DOE national lab.
• NASA FINESST — Funds graduate student-written proposals in astrophysics, heliophysics, planetary science, and Earth science.
• AAS Grants & Prizes — Travel grants, small research awards, and prizes for astronomy graduate students.

3. Research Resources

Finding undergraduate research

• NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) — Paid summer research at universities and labs nationwide, usually with housing. Deadlines cluster in January and February.
• AAS list of astronomy summer programs — Astronomy-specific REUs and summer research, including international options.

Tools

• NASA ADS — Search engine for astronomy literature, with citation and reference tracking.
• arXiv: astro-ph — Preprint server where most astronomy papers appear, usually before journal publication.
• Astropy — Standard Python library for astronomy, with tutorials for beginners.

4.Mentorship

• AAS Committee on the Status of Women — mentoring resources — Collected mentoring guidance and program listings.
• AMP-UP — Matches senior graduate students and junior postdocs with prize fellowship holders for guidance through the postdoc application process. Announced through the AAS each spring.
• AAS Astronomy Ambassadors — Training for early-career astronomers doing public engagement.