NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships
Quick Facts
NSERC provides financial support to outstanding eligible students pursuing master's or doctoral studies in a Canadian university in natural sciences or engineering.
Graduate program deadlines vary from mid-September to early October
Eligibility
Complete eligibility criteria are available on the NSERC website.
Potential applicants should also be sure that they are submitting their application to the most appropriate of the three federal funding agencies (CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC). If applicants are unsure whether they should submit their application to CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC, they should send a half-page summary of their intended research proposal to one of the agencies and ask the agency to confirm if they are eligible to apply to that agency. Applicants are advised to err on the side of caution, and ask the funding agency for an assessment rather than guess or assume incorrectly.
Evaluation Criteria
Complete evaluation criteria are available on the NSERC website.
Procedures
Application materials are submitted electronically via the NSERC online application system. Depending on the applicant's status at the time of application, applications are routed through a Canadian university or directly to NSERC. Applicants must review the NSERC website to determine the correct route for their application materials.
Applicants who are to submit their application to UBC must submit a complete application package by their graduate program's deadline (generally mid-September to early October - confirm with the graduate program).
Submission of transcripts: applicants who submit their application to UBC will be asked to identify a university designate who will upload the applicant's transcripts to their NSERC application. Normally, the university designate will be the graduate secretary in your current graduate program. Applicants are responsible to confirm with their graduate secretary which transcripts need to be provided by the student and which transcripts the graduate program already has on file to be uploaded.
Submitting the NSERC online application: Application materials are submitted online via the NSERC online application system. Applicants who are to submit their application via UBC should check with their graduate program to determine when they are to "submit" their application online. Some graduate programs may ask their students to submit a PDF copy of their application materials before submitting their application online, in order to allow the graduate program to review their application and request corrections.
Graduate programs review and rank the applications they receive, and forward their top applicants to the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Nominations must be submitted by graduate programs to the Faculty of Graduate Studies by 4:00pm on Friday 14 October 2011.
Applicants for Master’s funding and doctoral funding are ranked separately throughout the adjudication process. NSERC award applications are first reviewed and ranked by the applicant's UBC graduate program. The graduate program forwards its top-ranked applicants to the Faculty of Graduate Studies, which oversees a university-wide adjudication of all nominated applications. Adjudication committees composed of UBC faculty members review and rank nominated applications and select which applications will be forwarded to the national competition. UBC's nominees are forwarded to NERC, which oversees a nation-wide competition that selects which NSERC applications will be funded.
Further Information
For further information, please consult the www.nserc.ca.
