Graduate Financial Aid
Funding Opportunities for Incoming Graduate Students
Our department makes every effort to fund as many incoming students as possible. Of the 56 graduate students entering our program in Fall of 2006 and 2007, 21 or 38% received some funding from the Anthropology Department. Of those, 13 received full funding with a stipend and tuition waiver. Nine of the incoming students (16%) also received funding from UF departments and offices outside the Anthropology Department. Seven of our incoming students are supported by funding outside of the University of Florida.
All students offered admission are considered for our four-year Alumni Fellow Program, which provides a stipend and a tuition waiver, and our three-year Grinter Fellowship which is a smaller award and does not provide a tuition waiver. No additional application or documents are necessary for these funds; if you are offered admission, you will be considered for these fellowships.
We are now able to award six Alumni Fellow awards annually to the most promising incoming students. The average GRE scores of our incoming Alumni Fellows for the last two years was 1380; their average GPA was 3.74. We have awarded a total of 6 Grinter Fellowships to our Fall 2006 and 2007 incoming classes.
Our department also offers two other fellowships. These are offered every three years to an incoming student. The Ruegamer is awarded for general scholarly excellence and performance. The Zora Neale Hurston Fellowship is awarded to students whose areas of research or career goals are inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s studies of the African Diaspora. As with our Alumni Fellowships, no application is necessary for these awards; once we have made our admissions decisions, all students offered admission will be reviewed for their eligibility for these fellowships.
Incoming students with a Master’s degree in anthropology may also be considered for teaching assistantships in our Department. You will need a specific application to be considered for a teaching assistantship. Applications for teaching assistantships for the Fall term are solicited early in the Spring semester. If you are offered admission and have a Master’s degree in Anthropology, please contact Rhonda Riley (rriley@anthro.ufl.edu) in January for information about applying for a teaching assistantship. Each semester there is a large pool of applicants among our current students, and there is strong competition for teaching assistantships.
Other departments sometimes employ anthropology students as teaching assistants. Recently, anthropology students have received teaching assistantships through the foreign languages, biology, athletic tutoring, academic writing, and the housing departments. Please contact Rhonda Riley for more information on these opportunities or you may contact the appropriate department directly.
Opportunities outside of the Anthropology Department
Graduate students in the Department have also been funded from the following UF offices and programs:
FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) Fellowships are available for students with interests in Africa, or some areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. For students with research interests in Africa, the Center for African Studies offers the FLAS fellowships and anthropology students are eligible. For information go to: http://web.africa.ufl.edu/. For students with interest in Latin America or the Caribbean, the Center for Latin American studies also offers funding through the FLAS program. For more information, go to: http://www.latam.ufl.edu/funding/centersfa.html
The Tropical Conservation and Development Program (TCD) offers fellowships to anthropology graduate students interested in biological conservation and rural development issues in Latin America and elsewhere in the tropics. For more information go to: http://www.latam.ufl.edu/funding/centersfa.html
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers the O. Ruth McQuown Scholarship to outstanding female students. For more information on this scholarship, go to: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/scholarships/mcquown/ruthmcquown.html or contact the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
For information on other funding available through UF, particularly for minorities, go to:
http://gradschool.rgp.ufl.edu/diversity/financial-aid-bulletin-board.html
UF’s Financial Aid Office
The University of Florida’s Office of Student Financial Affairs offers Federal loans to all qualified graduate students. For more information go to: http://www.sfa.ufl.edu/. This site offers information on additional sources of funding as well as a link to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). You will need to fill out a FAFSA for any Federal loans through UF. Our Financial Aid Office also uses the FAFSA form to access graduate applicants eligibility for small need-based grants ($2,000/year). These grant funds are awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis and are limited. To be considered for these grant funds, you should submit your FAFSA form as soon as possible after January 1 for the following academic year.
