All doctoral students in English receive six years of fellowship support from Yale. Normally, fellowships provide both tuition and a stipend for the first two years, when coursework is undertaken. In three of the remaining four years, students receive the same amount of aid while teaching or pursuing semester-long Graduate Professional Experiences. Students in the humanities receive University Dissertation Fellowships in their fifth or sixth year of study, which allow for two semesters of full-time dissertation research and writing. Students who elect in Year Three to pursue the MPhil instead of the PhD are entitled to one semester of fellowship funding to complete their MPhil capstone projects, to be taken in their sixth or seventh semester. For additional information, please consult the Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs and Policies Bulletin.
Students in the English Ph.D. program typically apply for a Summer Language Institute Fellowship for language study following the first year; there are separate applications for courses taken at Yale and outside Yale. Detailed information and the application for both these fellowships are available from the Yale Student Grants & Fellowships Database.
Students advance to candidacy in their third year when a dissertation prospectus is submitted and approved. For students at the dissertation stage, several fellowship and grant opportunities exist both within the University and outside it to support the pursuit of dissertation research. Within Yale, for example, the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library provides generous fellowships for the support of dissertation research in its wide-ranging and rich collections, and the Lewis Walpole Library offers fellowships for students and other scholars to pursue research in its 18th-century collection. The Graduate School offers information and guidance about applying for research grants from external sources to students pursuing dissertation work. In addition, the Graduate School maintains two general funds of its own that provide support for students in the summers of their dissertation years: John F. Enders Fellowships and Research Grants, and the John Perry Miller Fund.
Refer to the Graduate School website for information on further funding opportunities.