Northeastern University Dissertation Completion Fellowships

• For Award Semester: Fall 2026
• Student Application due: July 21, 2026 by 5:00 pm
• Recommendation Letters due: July 27, 2026 (PhD Network will email your recommenders to collect letters.)

Dissertation Completion Fellowships provide a one-semester stipend to outstanding PhD candidates who would benefit from the financial security and the freedom to focus on their final semester writing. The award is one semester of support.  Awardees are expected to graduate at the end of the semester in which they hold the DCF.  Application materials should attest to the dissertation being near completion rather than a gap in funding.

A committee of Provost Office and college representatives reviews materials according to the overall strength of the candidate’s application and with regard to the likelihood of timely completion of a quality dissertation.  Students’ funding history and dissertation committee’s expectations are taken into consideration as well.  Application packages that are not complete or are late will not be considered, and it is the applicant’s responsibility to make sure all required materials are received by the deadline.

Submission Requirements:

1. An awards statement for the fellowship from the student that includes a) the expected date of dissertation defense, b) detailed information about past and current funding for every year of the PhD, c) a timeline for completion that takes into account all research and writing that remains to be done.
2. Curriculum vitae
3. Letter of recommendation from the dissertation advisor that describes the importance of the work and indicates the reasonable expectation of completion, defense, and submission.

The applicant must upload an awards statement and the curriculum vitae as PDFs to the Portfolio Submissiom, which is linked at the bottom of this page. The advisor indicated in the form will be contacted to submit a letter of recommendation.

The stipend for one semester will be the standard semester stipend rate for the program where the student’s primary affiliation resides. In addition, the student’s one-credit registration fee will be remitted and health insurance will be covered by the award for the semester in which the student holds the fellowship. The award must be used during the semester for which it is awarded and may not be deferred. Students are expected to complete their dissertation during the period of the award and may not hold any employment, internal or external, or other awards during that term including outside fellowships, research assistant appointments, or teaching assistant appointments. For students on federal loan, a concurrent DCF award may result in an adjusted loan amount. Please consult the Student Financial Services Offices ([email protected]) for additional information.

Submit your DCF Application here. 

A note for students self-nominating for the DCF:

We’ve recently launched a new awards nomination portal, and a few fields are still being refined, including support for self-nomination. Because the current version was built with faculty/staff nominators in mind, some sections will look a little off when you’re nominating yourself. Here’s how to complete them:

• Nominee Information: Enter your own name, email, and NUID here.
• Rationale for Nomination: Write this in the first person, explaining why you’re applying and how you meet the DCF criteria (your progress toward completion, timeline, etc.). Note: this field will be removed for self-nominations in an upcoming update, since the review committee draws this information from your supporting documents instead. However, for now, please complete it so your submission goes through.
• Nominator Information: This will auto-fill with your own name and email from your SSO login — that’s expected. Leave it as is.
• Confirmation checkbox: The checkbox language (“I confirm that I have contacted the nominated student…”) does not apply when you’re nominating yourself. Please check the box anyway to proceed — this will be corrected in an upcoming portal update.

(Please disregard any language elsewhere on the portal suggesting a faculty/staff member must submit this nomination — for the DCF, students are required to self-nominate.)

We appreciate your patience as we continue improving the new system.