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.
All student recipients of the Fellowship Award are candidates for Doctor of Philosophy or Master’s degrees at Weill Cornell Graduate School, an educational institution that maintains a regular faculty and curriculum and normally has a regularly enrolled body of students in attendance in New York, NY, the place where we carry on our educational activities. The Fellowship Award is not payment for teaching, research, or any service. Non-resident fellows please see “Distribution” section below for applicable tax obligations.
Eligibility Criteria for the Fellowship Award
1. Funding source must be external to WCGS
- Only individual competitive fellowships, scholarships, diversity supplements, or research grants from external agencies are eligible for a Fellowship Award.
- Awards internal to WCGS and its Tri-Institution affiliates, including Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering and Rockefeller University, are ineligible. Examples of such ineligible awards include: WCGS Fellowship Award and the MSK Merit Fellowship
- If a student declines an eligible fellowship (e.g., NSF GRFP, F31, etc.) to accept an ineligible internal grant, they will continue to receive the fellowship award under the terms of the initial eligible award for the period of the internal grant while student is at WCGS.
2. Funding must be granted directly from the funding agency to an individual student
- Institutional training grant appointments to T32, CTSC TL1, and R25 grants are ineligible
3. Funding source must provide funds that replace costs otherwise paid by the advisor or the university
- Fellowships, scholarships, or grants must provide funds in at least one of the following categories: stipend, tuition, or student fees.
- If fellowships, scholarships, or grants only provide funds for lab supplies and/or travel, they are ineligible.
WCGS reserves the right to determine the eligibility of a fellowship, scholarship, or grant for the Fellowship Award.
Amount
Eligible students can receive up to $5,000 per year. The Fellowship Award amount is determined by the dollar amount of the eligible funding source that covers the annual student stipend and the annual total amount of funding.
- If the stipend awarded by an eligible funding source is greater than 50% of the WCGS student stipend, the amount of Fellowship Award per year is $5,000.
- If the stipend awarded by an eligible funding source is less than 50% of the WCGS student stipend, the amount of Fellowship Award per year is 10% of the annual total of the stipend, tuition, and student fee support from the external award, up to $5,000.
A recipient continues receiving the Fellowship Award each year the fellowship, grant, or scholarship is active.
Distribution
WCGS issues the total annual Fellowship Award amount two times each year. The timing of distribution is determined by the start date of the eligible funding source.
- If the funding source is activated November - May, the Fellowship Award check is distributed in June
- If the funding source is activated June - October, the Fellowship Award check is distributed in November
The award is typically distributed in the second or third week of the distribution month.
NON-RESIDENT FELLOWS: Fellowship payments to non-residents may be subject to a reduced 14% tax withholding (or a lower treaty rate) if they are temporarily present in the United States with an "F," "J," or "M" visa.
The award comes in the form of direct deposit (i.e., ACH) or physical check. It is not considered compensation; it does not appear on W-2 or 1099-misc forms and is not reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as taxable income for domestic students.
Questions?
Please contact Dikaury Hernandez-Guner (dih3001@med.cornell.edu) for any inquiries or questions regarding the Fellowship Award.
You can download a PDF of the Fellowship Award policy here: Fellowship Award Policy