Petitions for CAFs

To allow for some flexibility, the Graduate School will review a limited number of petitions from the college for an exception to the minimum undergraduate cGPA as described in Table 2.

Each college first reviews these petitions from its graduate programs. Those it approves are sent to the Graduate School for final review. It is within the colleges’ purview not to allow any college-allotted awards to be offered to students who do not meet the fellowship nomination criteria.

The petition to the Graduate School must be in the form of a written request addressed to the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and uploaded on the nominee’s page in the GradAwards System. This request must provide a detailed justification for granting the GPA petition.

Petitions must be approved prior to the online submission of the college-allotted award.

All College-Allotted Fellowship awards must be submitted online by the deadline indicated on the Fellowship Calendar.

Programs may use CAFs to supplement the competition awarded fellowships and may do so by nominating the student in the Graduate School Nomination System. Graduate programs must inform awardees at the time of the fellowship offer of their willingness to provide (or not provide) additional financial years of support, supplemental stipend and the conditions, if any, that need to be met for continued support.

Awards made through the College-Allotted Fellowship process, no matter how early in the academic year, are subject to the Council of Graduate Schools’ Resolution regarding acceptances and financial aid offers.