Eligibility

Confirm that you and your nominating institution meet all the criteria below before you apply for a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS).

Nominations that do not meet all of the eligibility criteria will be deemed ineligible.

Candidate eligibility

Citizenship

Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada and foreign citizens are eligible to be nominated for a Vanier CGS.

Eligibility to apply for a Vanier CGS

To be considered for a Vanier CGS, you must:

Please note that only the PhD portion of a joint program is eligible for funding.

Eligibility of program of study

Number of months of doctoral studies

Regardless of disciplines, all prior doctoral-level studies that started in Canada or abroad, are considered in the evaluation of eligibility, and are considered to be continuous, full-time, and uninterrupted unless otherwise confirmed by the institution (including the summer months, unless on official leave). The Vanier-Banting Secretariat will count two months of part-time study as one month of full-time study.

Students who studied on a part-time basis must outline their part-time study in the Other Application material task attachment. The information must also be reflected in the transcripts.

Joint graduate research programs

If you are registered in a joint graduate research program, and a master's degree is obtained as part of the program (for example, MA/PhD, MS/PhD), the months of study are calculated starting from the date on which you are officially registered in the joint program (including the master's portion of the program).

If you are registered in a joint professional undergraduate/PhD program (such as MD/PhD, JD/PhD, DVM/PhD), only the months of study in the PhD portion will be counted.

Nominating institution

The nominating institution must have received a Vanier CGS quota.

Eligibility to hold a Vanier CGS

Without exception, the Vanier CGS is tenable only at the eligible Canadian institution that submitted the nomination.

To hold the Vanier CGS, the candidate must:

Part-time studies

A Vanier CGS may be held by students who are registered part-time due to disability, parental or medical reasons, or family and community-related responsibilities. Requests which fall outside these areas will be reviewed by the agencies on a case-by-case basis. For eligible part-time students, the Vanier CGS will be equivalent to full-time funding spread over a longer period of time.

Canadian federal government employees

Please refer to the Tri-agency policy on the use of funds for federal government employees applying to granting agency programs to determine eligibility.

Multiple applications

Eligible candidates may apply to both the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships program and other agency-specific doctoral-level scholarship/fellowships programs (whether to the same or a different federal granting agency) in the same academic year, provided that the research proposed in each application falls within the mandate of the federal granting agency to which the application is submitted. For more information, please refer to Identify area of research.

Note: since eligibility, evaluation criteria and competition deadlines are different; applications submitted to Vanier CGS are not considered in agency-specific doctoral award competitions. You must apply to each program individually.

Candidates who are successful in both competitions will have to choose which award to accept.

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