Awards and funding

Student writing in notebook

The University of Waterloo is proud to offer financial support to graduate students.

At Waterloo, graduate students may be able to receive funding from various sources such as Teaching Assistantships (TA), Research Assistantships (RA), Graduate Research Studentships (GRS), internal awards, external awards, bursaries, and emergency loans.

Internal awards

Graduate funding and awards database

Visit our graduate funding and awards database to identify internal Waterloo award opportunities for current and prospective students. 

Many internal Waterloo awards have been made financially possible through donations from the Waterloo community of Faculty, Staff, and Alumni, as well as donations from the public sector and private donors. Graduate students who receive a Waterloo award from an endowed or donated fund from a specific donor will be notified of this via email. Recipients will be asked to complete a short online form expressing how the award has impacted them personally. The Office of Development will then share these stories with the donor.

The majority of internal awards do not require an application. Instead, students are nominated by their departments based on specific award & selection criteria. Graduate students can also contact their department graduate co-ordinator for further details about internal Waterloo awards. 

President's Graduate Scholarship (PGS)

Waterloo is pleased to provide the President's Graduate Scholarship (PGS) to outstanding graduate students who hold certain major federally and provincially funded competition-based scholarships.

External awards

At Waterloo, we encourage our top graduate students to apply for external awards including those from Canada’s three major research granting agencies and Ontario's major scholarships programs. Students who choose to study at Waterloo and are successful in the major federal and provincial competitions will also receive the President's Graduate Scholarship.

Application procedures vary. It is the responsibility of the applicant to check our external awards web pages below as well as the agency-specific websites for complete details on eligibility, application, and applications instructions.

Federal master's

Federal doctoral

Provincial scholarship

Other prestigious external scholarships

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Two students working on a laptop

Minimum funding

The University recognizes that graduate students are critical to the University's missions of teaching and research and strives to acknowledge this through minimum funding levels in research programs. Each year, the Graduate Student Relations Committee reviews changes to student costs and makes a recommendation to senior administration on how student support should change year-over-year.

Two students in the lab

Teaching and research assistantships

Teaching Assistantship (TA) and Research Assistantship (RA) positions are a great way to gain valuable experience in teaching and research. These assistantships may be mandated and part of your graduate funding package or may be optional/additional to what is specified in your offer letter. 

Awards definition and privacy

Terms of reference

The term "award" is a general designation applied to any scholarship, prize, medal, fellowship, or grant of money assigned to a student. Within this designation, awards are further defined as follows:

  • Awards - based on a combination of criteria such as academic performance, leadership or involvement in extracurricular activities or student affairs at the university or in the community, work-related experience, athletic achievement or participation, or work-term performance, and may include a financial need component
  • Bursaries - based primarily on financial need
  • Scholarships - based primarily on outstanding academic merit (80% or greater) or excellence in a specific subject or group of subjects

Privacy

Recipients of awards and funding may have their information (including details such as recipient name, academic program, award value, etc.) shared with donors, sponsors, agencies and institutional administrative staff for stewardship, recognition and statistical purposes. Please note that through the name/eligibility of the award, recipient demographic information may be identified. Should you have any questions about this, please contact the Associate Director, Graduate Financial Aid & Awards.