Fellowship and Scientific Writing Resources

The OFSW has sourced materials from the NIH, professional grant writing consultants, and the literature to create multiple fellowship writing workshops that combine didactic lectures with peer review of participants’ proposals. Notification of the workshop dates are sent out via the Graduate Student email list.

• NSF GRFP Workshop: The NSF GRFP funds early-stage graduate students, first or second year students, who have not completed a stand alone Master’s degree. This mutli-week workshop includes detailed instruction regarding rules and regulations, review criteria, and coordination of peer review.
  Dates: Workshop September-October. Submission deadline typically mid-October.

• NIH F31 Workshops: The F31 National Research Service Award (NRSA) predoctoral training fellowship is given to promising applicants with the potential to become productive, independent investigators. We offer the F31 workshop series three times a year to coincide with NIH fellowship cycle deadlines. The goal of these multi-week workshops is to provide students with information regarding application components, outline the NIH peer review system for evaluating fellowships and grants, and coordination of peer review.
  Dates: Workshops October-November, February-April, and June-July. Submission deadline April 8, August 8, and December 8. When deadline dates occur on a weekend or federal holiday, the submission deadline is the next business day. 

We encourage students to reach out to our office via email to set up appointments for individualized advice on all topics related to fellowships. We can assist at all stages of proposal development; including helping you choose a fellowship that is aligned with your research and career goals, brainstorming research topics/hypothesis development, and structuring an effective proposal.  With advanced notice, we also offer editing of finalized drafts.

Some fellowships are submitted to the sponsor from the university using a "system-2-system" platform; other fellowships are submitted to the sponsor by the applicant. Regardless of the method of submission, all fellowships with a budget must be reviewed by the university prior to submission.

The Office of Fellowships and Scientific Writing is responsible for routing all graduate student fellowship and grant applications to the Office of Sponsored Research Administration (OSRA) at Weill Cornell Medicine for review. Fellowship applications are routed to OSRA through Weill Research Gateway (WRG). OSRA has standard due dates associated with application routing in WRG.

NIH submissions

NIH submissions are due for pre-review at 3pm EST 7 business days prior to the sponsor deadline. Pre-review requires that all “non-science” documents must be finalized. All attachments except the Specific Aims page, Research Strategy, and associated Bibliography are due in their final form at pre-review.

NIH submissions are due for final review at 3pm EST 2 business days prior to the sponsor deadline. All grant documents must be finalized at this time.  

All other submissions

All other submissions are due for final review at 3pm EST 2 business days prior to the sponsor deadline. All grant documents must be finalized at this time. 

The Office of Fellowships and Scientific Writing (OFSW) works together with the Graduate School's post-award and financial team and Office of Sponsored Research Administration (OSRA) to help students with federal fellowships submit required progress reports. These include:

• NIH Research Performance Progress Reports (RPPR) for F31 and F99/K00 fellowships. RPPRs are due to the NIH 2 months before the start of the next project period. RPPRs are submitted to the NIH via eRA Commons, and must be routed to OSRA in eRA Commons for approval 7 business days prior to the NIH deadline for review.
  
• NSF GRFP Annual Activities Reports, described in the administrative guide. Annual Activities Reports are submitted via the NSF Fastlane portal. 

2024 NSF GRSP Awardees and Honorable Mentions

While WCGS guarantees funding for all students, we strongly encourage our students to apply for external funding. As an incentive, WCGS issues an additional “Fellowship Award” to each student who receives a fellowship, scholarship, or grant from an external funding agency’s competitive award program. To learn more, click here.

The Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences believes that presenting research as a first-author is an essential part of the graduate training experience. To support our graduate students, WCGS provides $1,200 per year to PhD students in the BCMB, IMP, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and PBSB programs to travel to present their first author work, e.g., a poster or talk, at a conference or meeting. To learn more, click here.

Diversity Supplements are additional financial support provided to Principle Investigators (PIs) who have already been awarded a research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The goal of these supplements is to enhance the diversity of the research workforce by financially supporting the stipends/salaries of students, postdoctorates, and eligible investigators from diverse backgrounds, including those from groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in health-related research. To learn more, click here.