School of Graduate Studies
Queen's University-
Faculty & Staff
- Recruitment
- International Agreements
- Domestic Agreements
- Cotutelle Program
- Funding & Administration
- Admission and Registration
- Queen's New Grading System
- Degree Completion
- Supervision
- Students with Disabilities
- Students in Distress
- Quality Assurance
- Policies, Procedures & Guidelines
- SGS Professional Expense Reimbursements
- Governance of the School
- Graduate Calendar
- Graduate Studies Forum
- Graduate Information Exchange Sessions
- PeopleSoft Student System - Updates
- Annual Report
- Grad Coord Orientation
- Graduate Credentials
Funding & Administration of Graduate Student Awards
- Funding Graduate Students
- Administration of Student Awards by Financial Services
- Terms & Conditions of current awards - (as written for students in student section).
Funding Graduate Students
External graduate student awards are extremely important not only for financial benefit, but as a benchmark of academic excellence. All students are required to apply for external awards for which they are eligible.
Queen's guarantees a minimum funding package currently valued at $18,000 each year for eligible doctoral students. This amount is a minimum and actual doctoral student support may be substantially higher depending on the program of study.
The funding package is typically comprised of a combination of internal and external awards as well as Teaching and Research Assistantships.
Types of Awards
Registered funding eligible students who are in good academic standing with Queen's may be eligible for a wide range of internal and external scholarship and bursary awards including:
- Queen's Graduate Awards (QGA)
- Sutherland Awards
- International Tuition Awards (ITA - for international students only)
- Graduate Dean's Doctoral Field Travel Grants
- Graduate Dean's Conference Awards
- E.G. Bauman Fellowships
- Roeher Institute Research Grants
- R. Samuel McLaughlin Fellowships
- Franklin Bracken Fellowships
- Arts '49 Principal Wallace Fellowships
- Mackenzie King Traveling Scholarships
- PhD Graduate Student Scholarship in Materials Research (MMO)
- Department of National Defence Scholarship and Fellowship Program
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) awards
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) awards
- Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS, OGSST)
Internal Awards
Queen's offers graduate student support annually through internal, or "named" fellowships and scholarships. Students do not apply for these awards or fellowships. Instead, they are based on students' academic qualifications and performance.
These merit-based scholarships and fellowships, established by benefactors of Queen's, make an important contribution to the support of our graduate students. For the most part, the Fellowship Committee of the SGS administers these awards on recommendations from the departments through an annual competition.
Departments are notified of this annual competition well in advance of the annual deadline (end of April), and are provided instructions on how to submit departmental nominations, as well as details of the adjudication process. This internal fellowship competition is normally adjudicated in late May.
Students applying to graduate programs or continuing enrolment in a graduate program at Queen's do not make a separate application for these named fellowships (with the exception of the Sutherland awards). Departments will nominate eligible students during the annual competition.
In addition, some graduate departments make nominations for awards in particular fields of study. These departmental awards can be paid out for the current academic session until the last day of February.
Departments who have such awards are notified each May about that year's expendable amount and all deadlines and guidelines. Departments nominate eligible students for their awards via a memo addressed to the SGS.
Go to the Graduate Calendar for descriptions of these Internal Awards & Fellowships
Queen's Graduate Awards (QGA)
Each department's QGA allocation is determined based on the number of full-time funding eligible students (year 1 of one year Master's programs; years 1 & 2 of two-year Master's programs; year 1 through 4 of PhD programs) using the enrolment data from the November 1st student count conducted by the University. This information is communicated to Departments by memo from the SGS in March each year.
Graduate programs use QGA to build funding packages to make admission offers to graduate applicants.
Funding International Students
Queen's has agreements with the China Scholarship Council (CSC) and Ministry of Higher Education in the Arab Republic of Egypt aimed at recruiting and funding doctoral students who wish to study at Queen's. In 2010 an Agreement was also signed with the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau in relation to the King Abdullah Scholarships.
Under these agreements, students accepted at Queen's receive funding support from their home country and from the Queen's graduate department or program. Please contact your Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies for details.
International Tuition Awards
The SGS has a limited number ofITAs that are distributed to departments. In that annual March memo from the SGS, Departments are also advised of the number of ITAs held by continuing international students and whether they can expect to receive any new ITAs.
It should be noted that ITAs return to the SGS when they are no longer required (if the international student has completed their degree, become landed, or withdraws from the program).
When an ITA is not available for an international student from the SGS, an equivalent award will be provided from the Department's QGA allocation.
NB: International students who arrive with full funding support from an external source (e.g. government funding), do not receive ITA funding. Confirmation of that external support must be provided to the SGS.
Conference Travel Awards
Conference presentations are an important part of graduate training, provide networking opportunities with experts in the field and acknowledge students' scholarly contributions. The opportunities for students to present at conferences varies greatly depending on the program of study.
The School of Graduate Studies began allocating a lump sum to each graduate program based on enrolment and the number of Conference Travel Awards received by their graduate students in each of the last two years.
Programs now allocate awards to their students who meet the award criteria and have the flexibility to determine the amount of each award. As a result, CTAs can be awarded in variable amounts.
The terms and conditions of holding a CTA remain unchanged and the graduate program provides to the SGS a list of award recipients and the amount awarded. The School of Graduate Studies will then process payment of the award to the student in the usual manner. Programs may not retain unspent CTA funds from one academic year to the next.
The minimum allocation for a program is $500. Each program receives its lump-sum CTA based on full-time eligible enrolment.
The SGS will send a memo to each program in March with the total amount you have available.
Payment of awards through direct deposit
All awards -- including scholarships, fellowships and Queen's Graduate Awards -- administered by the SGS are paid through direct deposit to the student's bank account of record after registration is finalized. International Tuition Awards (and their QGA equivalents) are paid directly into the recipient's fees account.
Needs-based Awards
Needs-based awards are administered by the Office of the University Registrar
Tri-Council Top-up Award
All Queen's graduate students in the first year of their program, who bring new funding from one of Canada's three granting councils automatically receive a $5,000 Tri-Council Award as a top-up from the University.
The $5,000 award is provided automatically and no application is needed.
Queen's provides the Tri-Council Award to new grant holders who are incoming graduate students, as a way of both supporting and applauding these students for choosing Queen's for their graduate studies.
Ontario Graduate Scholarships
The Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) program promotes excellence in graduate studies at the master's and doctoral levels. An OGS can be awarded for a minimum of two terms and a maximum of six terms as per the provincial regulations, providing $5,000 per term of full time study.
Full details of the 2013-14 OGS competition is now available!
OGS program guidelines 2013-14 (844KB)
Queen's OGS instructions to applicants (33KB)
Administration of Student Awards by Financial Services
Currently, Financial Services administers a subset of student awards processed within the University. With the implementation of PeopleSoft Student, all student awards will be administered by the School of Graduate Studies (if the recipient is a current graduate student)and the Office of the University Registrar, Student Awards (for all other students).
This change has been effective from March 8, 2011.
What does this mean to you?
Instead of submitting a cheque requisition form to Financial Services to initiate payment of a student award, the new Student Award Payment Form must be completed and forwarded to either the School of Graduate Studies, or the Office of the University Registrar, Student Awards depending on the whether the student is a graduate student or not.
New Student Award Payment Form (145 KB)
This transition will not affect student award payments in 2010-11 that were in place prior to the launch of PeopleSoft Student (prior to March 8, 2011).
When and how students are paid these awards may change as part of this transition, to line up with when and how student awards are normally dispersed by SGS and Student Awards. Students will be contacted directly by SGS or Student Awards with information about dispersal dates and other relevant information.
For any questions, please contact the School of Graduate Studies:
Phone: (1)-613-533-6100
Fax: (1)-613-533-6015
E-mail: grad.studies@queensu.ca
Gordon Hall, Room 425
74 Union Street
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
Classification of Research Assistantship Earnings
For full details on the Graduate Research Assistant Fellowship go directly to the Human Resources website.
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