Please Note: I do not work for the financial aid office at Indiana University. Do not send me requests for financial aid information or scholarship information. This is just some friendly advice from one graduate student who has done many funding searches over the past few years.

Looking for External Funding

While most people know why they might want external funding, it's often harder to figure out where to apply. This page has been set up to give you a set of pointers as to how to conduct an external funding search at IU, along with some pearls of wisdom from those who have conducted such searches before. I don't claim that this list is complete.

Department Resources

Jennifer Fleisher is the department staff member in charge of funding materials; her desk is across from the main office in Lindley. She has a large collection of applications and information on various programs. Start your funding search by talking to her and looking at her lists of programs.
Section in the graduate handbook on financial assistance for graduate students, including a listing of some programs.

Campus Resources

The GradGrants center, located in the library, has listings of grants and fellowships. They put out a newsletter which describes programs on which they have received recent information.
A list of graduate school provided awards, some of which are available to students.
The Grants Online database of funding sources.

Web Resources

The TAP Collection of resources for women in Computer Science maintains a list of funding sources, most of which are open to all students.
The National Science Foundation Gopher has information online about funding programs.
ACM SIGMOD has a collection of information on academic careers, including information on how to obtain funding .
The Minority On-line Information Service maintains a listing of funding sources for minority students.
The Chronicle of Higher Education puts out a weekly newsletter containing a section on upcoming funding deadlines.

Miscellaneous Pearls of Wisdom

Start Early. Application deadlines range from early November to early February (in particular, the NSF fellowship application deadline is early in November). Starting to think about applications at the end of fall semester is probably too late for funding for the next academic year.
First year students can use references from their last institution, though you should try to get at least one current reference (the NSF requires two of your references to be from your current institution). It's not impossible to file applications early in your first year though --- talk to graduate advisors and your professors and see if anyone would be willing to write letters for you.
Some programs, like the NSF fellowship program, make the reviewers' comments available to you sometime in the spring. These comments can give you good feedback for filing future applications. They don't advertise that these comments are available, but you can get them for the asking; other programs might have similar options.
IU has a program by which students who apply for the NSF fellowship during their first year and get honorable mention (but no fellowship) receive additional research support during the summer after the first year. The amount of award was $1500 in 1992. This alone makes the application process worthwhile.
Pay attention to the restrictions on programs. The NSF program puts a limit on the number of credit hours you can have finished before application. This becomes important if you are planning to put off applying for fellowships for a year.
Get feedback on your application essays from professors and other students. Look at guides for proposal writing if you're new to writing fellowship applications or ask Shelly to show you some of the successful proposals submitted by other students.
Shelly can help you get all your materials together and get the application sent out (including typing and formatting), but you have to give her sufficient warning. Plan to have your application to her at least a week before the application deadline. Some programs require signatures of university officials that cannot be obtained on really short notice. If your application requires this, talk to Shelly well in advance to work out an application timetable.
Make copies of your application and hold onto them. If you apply for more programs in later years, it can be helpful to have the old copies around. The department also likes to have copies for your official records.
Always keep copies of official transcripts from prior schools on hand (one per school should be plenty). Doing this makes it a lot easier for you to submit applications for programs that you hear about at the last minute. IU does transcripts-while-you-wait, but plan on out-of-the-area schools needing a week to receive and fill a transcript request.
Keep trying. Just because you don't get any awards one year doesn't mean you can't get them in later years. You become much more attractive as an applicant as you get publications, research focus, and better recommendation letters; your writing style will also improve over the years. I personally applied for two programs a year for four years before getting an offer, but the persistance was well worth it and I learned a lot in the process about writing good applications.