CS-PhD-Application-fee-waivers

Introduction and Background

During the long and stressful process of PhD applications, expensive application fee turns out to be an important factor that impede me from applying for more programs. Some schools offers application fee waiver. However, as suggested by Prof. Jesse Thomason,

You often can get application fees waived, and requesting waivers should not affect your application. Unfortunately, many schools and departments either intentionally or unwittingly make the procedure for applying for a waiver difficult to untangle.

In addition, sometimes the fee waiver is only availble for people with specific citizenship or permanent residentship. Therefore, I created this list of application fee waivers for a collection of schools (mostly in North America, in which PhD programs typically requires an application fee), hoping that other students can save some time from finding these information.

Although this list notes for CS PhD application fee waivers, most link should be generalizable to graduate program or at least graduate program in School of Engineering or School of Art and Science. People applying for other programs can also look for departmental fee waiver by either searching through the departmental website or messaging the admission office.

Each program will be followed by a link to the fee waiver information page and/or a short message indicating the limitation for application. For some US schools, application fee waiver will only be offered to US Citizens or permanent residents -- this will also be annotated.

If a school is not on the list, it does not necessarily mean that they do not offer application fee waiver. You can find information through search engine, probing into their application pages, or messaging the admission offices.

To add more entries or correct some entries, please submit a PR or open an issue.

General Fee Waivers

Some schools offer fee waivers to participant/members of specific programs/organizations. Some of the common programs or organizations are listed here.

• GEM Fellowship Program [Link]
• Black in AI [Link]
• LatinX in AI [Link]
• Queer in AI [Link]
• Queer in AI Fiancial Aid/Appliication Review Program [Link]
• oSTEM Grad School Application Funding [Link]

2022 Application Fee Waivers

United States

• Stanford Graduate Fee Waivers [Link]
• Carnegie Mellon SCS Graduate Application Fee Waiver [Link]
• UC Berkeley Application Fee Waiver [Link] Note: Must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident
• UC Berkeley School of Information Fee Waiver [Link] Note: This is for applicants not elligible for general fee waiver.
• University of Washington - Paul G. Allen School of CSE [Link] Note: in tab Fee Waivers
• MIT Graduate Admission Application Fee Waivers [Link] Note: Non U.S. Citizens/permanent citizen are elligible if they participated in an MIT/OGE-sponsored diversity program in the past five years.
• Princeton Application Fee Waivers [Link] Note: Non-U.S. Citizens are eligible to apply for a fee waiver based on participation in a program, but no financial hardship.
• UPenn Engineering Application Fee Waivers [Link] Note: Search for fee waiver on this page.
• UIUC Graduate Application Fee Waivers [Link] Note: must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
• Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering [Link] Note: Under Application Fee and Waiver Request
• Cornell Graduate Fee Waivers [Link]
• UCLA Graduate Education [Link] Note: Non-U.S. Citizens are eligible to apply for a fee waiver based on participation in a program, but no financial hardship.
• UCSD Graduate Division [Link] Note: International applicants are not eligible.
• UCSD CSE department [Link] Note: DDL Nov 15 2021 This is for those who are not elligible for general fee waiver
• UCSC Graduate Application Fee Waiver [Link] Note: Search for Fee Waiver in this page. Must be US Citizen, AB 540, or a Permanent Resident of the United States.
• UCI Graduate Admission Fee Waiver [Link] Note: U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and DACA/AB540 eligible only
• University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering [Link] Note: Request a fee waiver by sending an email with the CV and transcripts to: [email protected].
• University of Maryland Graduate School [Link]
• Harvard University, the Graduate School of Arts and Science [Link] Note: Under tab How much is the application fee and How can I apply for an application fee waiver
• Caltech Graduate Application Fee Waiver [Link] Note: Search for How do I apply for a fee waiver? in this page
• Columbia Graduate School of Art and Science [Link]
• University of Illinois Chicago [Link] Note: No financial hardship fee waiver.
• University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School [Link]
• Georgia Institute of Technology [Link] Note: Under Fee Waivers
• Purdue University Graduate School Application Fee [Link]
• University of Massachusetts Amherst Robert and Donna Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences [Link] Note: Under Application Fee
• The Graduate School at UNC-Chapel Hill [Link] Note: Available for ten groups of domestic applicants
• UNC-Chapel Hill Computer Science [Link] Note: Available for applicants not elligible for the general fee waiver.
• Georgetown University Computer Science [Link] Note: Search for fee waiver
• Northeastern University College of Engineering [Link] Note: See the right hand side: "... graduate student applicants can use fee waiver code NUExperience21. To use the fee waiver..."
• NYU Tandon School of Engineering [Link]
• University of Massachusetts Amherst CICS [Link] Search for fee waiver
• Stony Brook University [Link]
• University of Utah Graduate Programs [Link] 0 application fee for domestic applicants, need to email to grad office.
• Brown University Computer Science [Link] Search for fee waiver

Canada

• University of British Columbia [Link]
• Simon Fraser University [Link] Note: Under PhD, in Application Fee Waiver.