The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship is a national fellowship program. Yale College students apply to this program in the spring of their sophomore year, and if selected will spend their junior and seniors at Yale as part of a community of undergraduate scholars interested in graduate study in humanities & related fields who conduct independent research in collaboration with a faculty mentor and who through the program’s weekly seminar meetings are introduced to various aspects of graduate school, careers in academia, and offered opportunities to share their research with others in the program.
Expectations of fellows include but are not limited to:
- Conduct independent research in the humanities and social sciences under the guidance of a Yale tenure-track or “ladder” faculty member. It is expected that undergraduate research culminates in a thesis or capstone project.
- Participate enthusiastically in weekly Friday cohort meetings (~1.5 hours long) on topics such as: faculty research, research communication, graduate school admissions, the life of a graduate student and professor, and more.
- Attend and participate in one Northeast MMUF conference per fellowship year (MMUF conferences are typically scheduled for one weekend (Friday and Saturday) every Fall semester.
- Submit program deliverables in a timely fashion: research progress reports, scholarly development and summer research proposals, draft statements of purpose, research abstracts, and final capstone papers/theses.
- Present their research at the annual spring end of term convenings.
Being a Mellon Mays program fellow is a serious time commitment. We recommend students deeply consider their academic and co-curricular commitments, personal and academic goals, and weigh whether enthusiastic commitment to the program’s requirements can be achieved before applying and committing to this program.
