The Personal Statement That Got Me a Dissertation Year Fellowship at UCLA
How I approached my personal statement to get an extra year of PhD funding at UCLA and finish my dissertation a year early
Here on Substack, I’ve recently come across a number of folks who are in the process of applying for funding for their graduate studies. While I’m very lucky to be in a program like UCLA where I have a guaranteed funding package, I’ve still found it necessary to maximize my time in graduate school by applying for funding outside of my department.
So, for a bonus newsletter this week, I thought I’d share the personal statement from my successful application for a Dissertation Year Fellowship (now called the Dissertation Year Award), which the UCLA Graduate Division gives out to those finishing their PhDs in the upcoming academic year. The fellowship provides tuition and fees as well as a stipend.
In general, you’ll probably be asked for a few things in a funding application, which could include:
Personal Statement - all about you and your career path, and how the grant will benefit you. This is what I’m sharing here today.
Research Statement - the nitty gritty details of your actual project, and how you will use the award period. Let me know if you’d be interested in reading one of these! I have several from my time in grad school.
A CV or resume
Letters of recommendation from your committee or other faculty members
Depending on the nature of the award, you could be asked for other things too, like a provisional budget or a teaching philosophy statement
Here are some of my top tips for writing compellingly about your work so that others want to fund it!
Contextualize your experience in graduate school: what other grants/fellowships/awards have you received, and how did those impact you? What would *this specific* award do for you? If you could wave a magic wand and get any outcome from the award period, what would that outcome be? Always talk about the very best case scenario.
Write about your experience holistically. The grant or fellowship isn’t just going to catalyze your research; it’s going to become another stepping stone in your career, academic or otherwise. What kinds of tangible experiences could or would you gain from getting the award?
Use a very confident tone without coming across as arrogant. Don’t apologize for needing the funding—if your humanities project isn’t going to require as much as, say, a hard sciences dissertation requiring thousands of dollars of equipment/lab time, that’s completely fine. Run your own race.
Tell a story and make a narrative out of your life that others want to read. If you’ve experienced challenges or setbacks, absolutely mention these, but in a very positive and empowered way. Focus on how you overcame these challenges and succeeded anyway.
A Dissertation Year Fellowship would not only allow me to write a stronger dissertation in my final year of graduate school, but would also be instrumental in helping me navigate the job market successfully. One of the most rewarding parts of pursuing a PhD at UCLA has been the wide array of opportunities to do interdisciplinary work and take advantage of UCLA’s close relationship with the Getty and other peer institutions. I am seeking a DYF so that I can make the most of these opportunities before embarking on my postgraduate career.
Graduate school has given me a diverse skillset and I hope to apply for a variety of jobs next year, including faculty jobs in Classics departments or related fields; academic-adjacent positions in higher education administration; jobs in academic publishing; and positions in museums. All of these roles would allow me to use the skills my PhD work has given me in writing, communication, research, and project management. The doctoral work I have completed so far has given me excellent preparation for a faculty job, but has also allowed me to see the applicability of my degree to a number of other roles and fields. I understand that this plan is an ambitious one and will make my job search more intensive; a DYF would afford me the time to thoroughly research, apply to, and interview for these jobs, increasing my chances of securing a full-time career position.
A DYF would also allow me to continue building skills that would help me to be more competitive on the job market. My time in the Classics department has been enriched by other opportunities to gain research and other professional experience, which has been made possible in large part because of the Graduate Division fellowships I have received in the past. For example, in the summer of 2021 I had a GSRM with Professor Amy Richlin, during which time I completed a book-length manuscript that I hope will someday serve as the basis for a monograph. During my GRM year (AY 2022-23) with Professor Bryant Kirkland, I was able to revise and submit part of this work to a peer-reviewed journal, and I am hopeful that the article will come out in late 2024 or early 2025. Professor Kirkland is now my dissertation committee chair, and the GRM was invaluable in helping me find my dissertation topic. These experiences have given me insight into the long process of initiating and eventually publishing academic work, which will be very useful in my future career. I would not have had the time to pursue such opportunities without fellowship support, and they have been some of the most meaningful experiences I have had in graduate school.
Fellowship support in my final year of graduate school would also support the continued development of research and professional interests that enhance the work I do on my dissertation. For example, my GRM year afforded me the time to apply for the Getty Consortium Seminar, which I was ultimately accepted to participate in. During the Consortium seminar, I was able to work extensively with the Special Collections at the Getty Research Institute, which led me to the work of twentieth-century poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. I have found the work of Finlay to be a useful modern comparison to bring into my fourth dissertation chapter, which analyses the portrayal of philosophers and philosophy in art and material culture. In the term following the Consortium seminar, I had the opportunity to take a seminar at UCLA with Professor Eva del Soldato, the visiting Speroni Chair, and work with UCLA’s Special Collections to explore the reception of Plato among early modern and modern intellectuals by providing a complete ownership history of UCLA’s Aldine Plato. While my second dissertation chapter on the reception of Plato among the Romans primarily focuses on antiquity, my work in this seminar gave me a greater understanding of Plato’s multifaceted cultural significance across time periods. These two seminars have led me to cultivate further interests in provenance research and reception studies, and I am currently completing a graduate certificate in Cultural Heritage Research, Stewardship, and Restitution with the Waystation at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. With a DYF, I could continue to work with the Waystation initiative next year, which would allow me to work collaboratively with graduate students and faculty at Shandong University, with whom the UCLA Waystation is currently partnered.
These experiences have led me to undertake a more ambitious and innovative dissertation that takes a more comprehensive view of the intellectual history of Greek philosophy, while developing secondary research interests and skills that will be of great value to me as I apply to jobs. The DYF would allow me to finish a superior dissertation and start my career in a timely fashion, while giving me space to take opportunities I cannot yet conceive of. Thank you for your consideration of my application.
I hope this can be helpful to some of you, or maybe just interesting. Let me know if this is something you’d like to see more of! I have more successful funding application essays to share as well, including the Research Statement I used for the DYA, which talks in more detail about my actual research project. One of my favorite things to do is help friends with their personal statements, and I’m always happy to give advice.
Take care until next time.
MKA