Funding | Awards | Faculty of Arts

Funding | Awards

Arts graduate funding and awards

Waterloo is proud to offer nationally competitive funding packages to the majority of incoming graduate students. In the Faculty of Arts, approximately 95% of our full-time MA students receive funding, and all full-time PhD students are guaranteed funding for four years.

In 2010-11, the average MA funding package was $12,000 (per year) and PhD students received a minimum of $22,000 (per year for 4 years). Students entering a graduate program with an external award from either the Tri-council or the Ontario Graduate Scholarship are also offered the $10,000 uWaterloo President’s Graduate Scholarship.

The amount of graduate funding offered to individual students depends on the particular graduate program and, most importantly, on the applicant’s overall academic merit, as evidenced by the application support documents (transcripts, letters of reference, applicant statement).

How to apply for funding

In most cases, you don’t need to make a separate application for internal (uWaterloo-provided) funding. When the admissions committee of each Arts graduate program reviews applications, the applicants are also considered for graduate funding. Offers of funding packages are then made to the applicant at the same time as the program offer (acceptance into the program).

Funding packages

Most funding packages are a combination of graduate research and/or teaching assistantships and scholarships. An assistantship is essentially a part-time job of 10 hours per week – it offers students both pay and excellent academic work experience. A scholarship is disbursed over the year, giving the student equal portions at the start of each academic term.

Specific funding details are on the department website of your grad program of choice.

Complete information on graduate funding and awards is on the uWaterloo Graduate Studies website.

External funding sources for graduate students

Application deadlines for major external awards are typically in early fall – that’s nearly one year before the award would be given, so plan ahead. Speak with the graduate scholarship coordinator in your home department about the application procedures. There are hundreds of potential awards out there, and you can search via the Graduate Studies’ awards database for sources. Some major Canadian award programs are:

Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) master’s and doctoral program
Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) graduate funding programs
Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (NSERC) graduate funding programs
Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) graduate funding programs
Trudeau Foundation Scholarship doctoral program

FYI: SSHRC, NSERC and CIHR are collectively referred to as the Tri-council.

Graduate Studies Endowment Fund

Grad students or grad student groups at uWaterloo can submit funding proposals to the Graduate Studies Endowment Fund for initiatives that enhance the learning, research, and overall experience of graduate students. Examples of funded projects include improvements to graduate student common space, academic events organized by graduate students, and improvement of physical and electronic resources for graduate students.

Loans and bursaries

Graduate students from Ontario can apply for a student loan through OSAP. And if the OSAP loan is insufficient to cover financial needs, or students encounter a financial emergency and need extra help, Waterloo has a graduate student bursary program. (What’s a bursary? A non-repayable funding amount based on financial need).

Co-op work terms also help

While a co-op work term is primarily intended to enhance experiential learning, graduate students who do a co-op term will earn an income to help off-set their academic expenses.