The Ohio State Graduate School’s Matching Tuition and Fee Award Program provides fee authorizations for graduate students who receive a competitive stipend from a funding agency that does not provide funds to cover tuition and fees. Additionally, the grad school has a waiver program to this requirement if the focus of the work is on underserved/underrepresented populations.
The Graduate School uses this program to make strategic investments in graduate education. The MTFA Program is a pre-approval program designed to strategically leverage Ohio State University resources to enhance the likelihood for the successful funding of competitive external research grants, training grants, and fellowships that support graduate students along with other aspects of graduate education. The pre-approval of these competitive applications to external funding agencies represents investment in the form of fee matches.
Funds are limited. Not all requests can be approved. If a pre-approval request is approved by the Graduate School in the online Graduate School Fee Match System, then once the grant/fellowship is successfully awarded and the funding is submitted via the MTFA system, then student specific requests must be entered into the online MTFA system. Subsequently, the student specific requests for the Matching Tuition and Fee Awards will be applied to the specific student(s) accounts by the Graduate School.
Guidelines to Keep in Mind
- Awards must pay, at a minimum, a stipend of $1,750/month and be reflected in the budget
- Requests must be entered into the system no later than two weeks prior to the proposal submission deadline
- Three documents are required (and combined into one PDF) – a letter explaining the importance of the work signed by the EHE Associate Dean for Research, the budget, and the request for proposals. All of these documents must align with the data that is entered in the MTFA system – number of students supported, semesters requested, and stipend paid per month.
- Follow these guidelines for entering the request into the system – MTFA System Guide for Submitters
Please reach out to Kim Lightle, Director of Research, EHE Office of Research, Innovation and Collaboration (ORIC) with any questions.
