Tuition and Fees

The University of California's current fee and tuition rates are published here: www.reg.uci.edu/fees/
United States citizens and permanent residents who relocate to California from other states may apply for legal residency here, following one year of continuous residence. The required "procedures of intent" are outlined here: www.reg.uci.edu/residency/classification.html

Financial Support

All applications for PhD admission are considered also for financial support, and all admission offers to Sociology currently include five years of funding. Applicants are not required to apply separately for admission and financial support.

Virtually all our incoming Ph.D. students have some form of financial assistance. The department awards merit-based fellowships and assistantship guarantees to incoming students on the strength of their individual applications as a whole. We give careful consideration to letters of recommendation, to the skills and capacities evidenced by writing samples, and to educational achievements indicated by test scores, grade-point averages, and academic honors.

All applicants are automatically considered for a variety of funding options. Departmental support takes many forms, ranging from full fellowships and tuition to competitive aid packages offering various combinations of fellowships, tuition and/or fee credits, teaching or research assistantships, and/or loans. In addition, there are a number of competitive fellowships. Among these are the Cota Robles Fellowship and the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship to encourage diversity and the Chancellors Fellowship, and the Regents Fellowship. Additional information about financial aid is available through the UCI Graduate Office. Particularly qualified applicants across the various subfields are encouraged to consider extramural application to nationally competitive graduate fellowship programs.

The Department also offers a variable number of multi-year fellowship packages. These consist of various combinations of financial support and Teaching Assistantship or Research Assistantships. These multi-year fellowships and fellowship packages are awarded to the most competitive candidates for admission.

In addition, the Center for the Study of Democracy offers several Democracy Fellowships for incoming Ph.D. students in political science or sociology who participate in the training program and activities of the Center. The program focuses on the empirical study of democracy in the United States and internationally. These awards normally include fellowship support for the first year, and TA commitments for additional years.

After the first year, TAships are the basic funding vehicle for most students. A number of graduate students are employed by externally funded research projects organized by members of the faculty. The University and the School of Social Sciences also provides competitive dissertation research fellowships for top ranked students admitted to candidacy, and our dissertation students are generally very competitive for both campus-wide and extramural fellowships.

All offers to non-residents of California, including non-US citizen international students, include nonresident tuition in the first year or two of study.

Financial assistance based on need (loans, primarily) is available to qualifying student applicants, through UCI Financial Aid &  Scholarships: www.ofas.uci.edu/content/

All students applying for need-based financial aid are required to file a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA): www.fafsa.ed.gov/

International students who are not US citizens or permanent residents are not eligible to apply for federal need-based financial aid. Further information on assistantships and funding resources can be found here.

Applying for Extramural Funding

Any time you apply for extramural funding (funding coming from a source other than UC Irvine), you will need to work with Alysha Casado (SSPB 4215; 949.824.6800; acasado@uci.edu ) to get your proposal approved by the Dean's office and Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA).  Our office needs three weeks prior to the due date to help get you started. For example, if you have a deadline of Oct. 21st, you should notify Brenda of your intention to submit no later than October 1st. We understand that sometimes you may not find out about an opportunity till very close to the deadline, but please try to help us out by giving us the advance notice whenever possible.  If you have any questions about the process don't hesitate to contact Brenda.

Planning
  • Make an effort to identify multiple sources of funding for your project, and find out if you would be allowed to submit your proposal to multiple agencies.
  • Make use of campus resources, such as the Office of Research Development for funding opportunities.
  • Carefully read through the calls and be sure to obtain the most recent guidelines to understand the requirements and restrictions.
  • Seek advice from advisors and allow enough time for your proposal to be read and revised internally.
 
Initial Steps
  • Begin the approval process with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) if your research project involves Human Subjects.
  • If you are applying to NSF for the first time and need to file through FastLane, please contact Jonathan Lew (949.824.3029) for log in account information.
  • Contact the Department Office at least three (3) weeks prior to the submission deadline to inform your intent to apply:
    • Please send Alysha the web link or email of the program announcement.
    • Answer the following questions:
      1. What is your project title?
      2. Who is your faculty sponsor/advisor?
      3. What are the start and end dates of your projects? (paying attention to the requirement set forth in the program guidelines)
      4. Will there be travel involved with your project? If yes, please list the destination(s).
      5. Would your project involve human subject research? Please answer any and all of the following that applies to you:
        1. If yes, have you started your IRB application?
        2. What is your HS number assigned by the IRB office?
        3. What is the approval date from the IRB office?
        4. If exempted, what is the subcategory number?
        5. Please provide approval letter/email from IRB office
  • By two weeks before the due date, Alysha will need to have an abstract, a budget and a budget justification (at a minimum; see below for more information on budgets). These can be in draft form, but are required for us to get the approval process started with the Dean's office and Sponsored Projects. Note, if the agency is providing just a flat stipend and doesn't request a budget, then the budget documents are not required.
 
Proposal Preparation
  • Prepare a clear, well organized proposal, following application guidelines. Agency guidelines are organized according to the topics that need to be addressed.  Since reviewers must make sure that each proposal addresses each of these topics, it is usually helpful to organize your proposal around them.
  • Budgets: send Alysha an email listing the project personnel and the initial amount you would like to allocate for supplies and materials, equipment, and travel.  You will need to provide a detailed explanation of the cost estimation methods used in preparing the budget. There should be a separate budget spreadsheet from the budget justification. Here is a sample of a budget spreadsheet. Here is an example of a justification. Of course if the agency has only a set stipend amount that doesn't allow for you to itemize expenses, you will not need to include these budget documents.
  • Additional forms, such as financial disclosure (Statement of Economic Interest), may be required.
 
Final Copies and Mailing
  • Preparing final copies and mailing of the proposal to the external funding agency are the responsibility of the PI.
 
Post Award Administration
  • Before any award is set up, SPA will make sure that IRB protocols have been approved and that they have received the financial disclosure forms.  Be sure you have both of these items taken care of promptly so that your award is not delayed.
  • In most cases, SPA is the official office of record and will be notified by the agency if a proposal is funded.  In some cases, the PI will be notified by the external agency directly.
  • SPA will notify the School and PI of the award and will set up an account number for the grant.  If you have been notified personally, please forward the notification to Alysha to set up an account through SPA so that you may be paid through the university.
  • PI should contact the Social Science Business Office for all post-award actions including grant-related hires, payroll, expense spending and monitoring, compliance, no-cost extensions, and award closeout.
 
Additional Funding Resources

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