Writing a student financial support offer letter clearly communicates to students how much, when and what type of support programs intend to provide to them. It also informs the student of the minimum qualifications needed in order to receive support, such as full-time enrollment and good academic standing.
Prospective Student Offers of Support
Graduate Studies encourages graduate programs to package multi-year offers to recruit and retain the brightest and best graduate students. Below are templates of multi-year "soft" offer letters for programs to use to recruit prospective graduate students. You may opt to use any combination of the below letters as necessary. However, employment and student financial support fellowships should be offered separately. They also include sample language should your prospective student be an international student or a non-California resident. Please be sure to delete any language that does not pertain to the prospective student. If in doubt about the language of your letters, reach out to the Student Financial Support team at gspayments@ucdavis.edu.
Before sending an offer, please review all sections of the template, select the sections relevant to the student you are sending the offer to, and place on departmental letterhead. If admission is accepted, follow-up each year or quarter with either a formal employment offer letter or a single year student financial support offer (template below).
- Prospective Student Offer - TEMPLATE A: Student Financial Support Fellowship
This letter template is for the student financial support fellowship portion of your offer. Student financial support fellowships should be given without expectation of employment or service to the university. Included in this template are options for full-year, partial year or multi-year student financial support for prospective students.
- Prospective Student Offer - TEMPLATE B: Employment Offer
This letter should be used to offer employment to prospective students.
- Prospective Student Offer -TEMPLATE C: Cover Letter
This letter should be used if you would like to present an overall amount to the student.
Continuing Student Student Financial Support - Single Year
Below is a single-year student financial support fellowship offer letter that includes standard language you may use when awarding your Graduate Program Fellowships Allocation funds or other non-BR union fellowships offered with no expectation of employment or service to the university. This letter includes sample language should your student be an international student or a non-California resident. This sample offer letter may be amended for one quarter of support, if needed.
Download Single Year Offer of Student Financial Support
Additional Best Practices
Award letters should specify:
- Full name of the student
- Date
- Student ID number
- Name of specific fellowship offered (e.g. the Earl C. Anthony or Edward Wickson Fellowship)
- Type of fellowship: Student Financial Support Stipend (or "living allowance"), Tuition & Fees, and/or Nonresident Supplemental Tuition
- Amount of student financial support fellowship
- Method of payment (e.g., paid in monthly installments through Student Accounting)
- Effective period of the award (e.g. October 1, 202X, to June 30, 202X)
- Your program contact information for questions (Award letters should not refer the student to Graduate Studies.)
Updating Offers
If the terms of the agreement (i.e. student financial support fellowship amount) changes after the letter is delivered to the student, a revised letter must be given to them. In the revised letter, note that the letter is "REVISED" and include the updated date of the letter.
Attachments
The Regulations for Graduate Students Receiving Fellowships (GS501) document is written for graduate students who have received an internal fellowship. It provides them with the general regulations, California residency regulations for tuition purposes, fellowship employment regulations, the process for an exception to policy, and tax information. We recommend you include this document with every fellowship offer for continuing and prospective students.
The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) resolution is supported by UC Davis. The resolution states that prospective graduate students are under no obligation to respond to offers of financial support prior to April 15th; earlier deadlines for acceptance of such offers violate the intent of this resolution.