Geoscience NSF Graduate Student Fellowships Decline

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The number of NSF Graduate Fellowships awarded to geoscience students has fallen 22% between 2005 and 2007 while the total budget has remained stable at $40.5 million. However, geoscience students continue to earn over 3% of the total awards, which is higher than the 2.5% of all Ph.D. students studying geoscience. The rate of decline of the number of geoscience fellowships is slightly higher than the total reduction in the number of awards given during the same 3-year period, which was 10%. NSF Graduate Fellowships have been well-distributed across the sub-specialties within in the geoscience community.

Geoscience NSF Graduate Fellows attended 38 individual institutions between 2005 and 2007, including two international programs. MIT tops the list with 10 fellowship winners since 2005, and the top 11 schools listed account for 64% of the awardees.

Total funding of geoscience NSF fellowships and the universities with the highest number of Geosicence NSF Fellows. Source: National Science Foundation.