SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship Eligibility for Students Not Nominated for CGS Doctoral
By Muntasir Minhaz • Published Jul 20, 2025 • Scholarships & Funding, Canadian Universities & Colleges
Not getting your university's nomination for the Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral did not shut a social sciences or humanities student out of tri-agency funding. SSHRC's own Doctoral Fellowship competition covered eligible students outside that quota, and one application was considered for both.
🎓 Your university nominates a limited number of students for the top award tier each year.
📩 One application was reviewed for both the nominated and non-nominated award at once, so you did not file separately.
💵 Both paid 40,000 CAD per year, differing mainly in guaranteed duration.
This structure has since folded into one joint tri-agency scholarship.
Why a nomination quota existed at all
SSHRC's Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral, known as CGS-D, worked on a quota. Each university received a limited number of nominations it could put forward for the CGS-D competition each year, and the graduate school ranked its own applicants internally to decide who filled those spots. A strong applicant at a university with many other strong social sciences and humanities candidates could miss the internal nomination cutoff even with a competitive file.
The fellowship that covered everyone else
SSHRC ran a separate competition, the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, open to eligible applicants whether or not their university nominated them for CGS-D. Under the joint application process , you submitted one application and were automatically considered for both the CGS-D and the Doctoral Fellowship in the same competition, so there was no separate form to file if your university did not nominate you for the top tier.
How the two differed
Both paid 40,000 CAD per year. The main difference was duration: CGS-D ran for a fixed 36 months, while the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship could be awarded for 12, 24 or 36 months depending on where you were in your program and how much CGS-D-eligible time you had left. A student closer to finishing their degree, or one who had already used part of their eligibility window, could still receive Doctoral Fellowship funding for a shorter term rather than being excluded outright.
What replaced this structure
The 2025-26 competition, with SSHRC results released April 29, 2025, was the final round run under the separate CGS-D and Doctoral Fellowship names. CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC have since moved to one harmonized doctoral scholarship, the Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral, part of the joint Canada Research Training Award Suite , paying 40,000 CAD per year for up to three years through a single national competition.
What to check with your graduate program now
Ask your graduate studies office how the current harmonized scholarship handles the internal ranking step that used to separate a CGS-D nomination from a Doctoral Fellowship application, since the exact mechanics of any remaining internal quota under the new joint program are set by each institution and are worth confirming directly rather than assuming the old rules still apply in full. Ask for your program's internal application deadline too, since it usually falls weeks before the national agency deadline.