The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I graduate the last week of April. It took ALOT of pushing to be hired by the first week of July. My SF was predicting the red tape wouldn't allow me to be hired until August or September. Your clearance may have to be checked, which I was told can take a week or 3 months. I was told I was extremely lucky it didn't take 6 months for all the paperwork to go through.

My SF reached out and told me the hope to have a job offer and start date for me by November. I was a particularly weird case though!

If my start date is September 28 and I was paid full stipend this month, next month october will I get partial for september 1-28.

I will continue the encouragement that SMART will pay you, albeit at the scholarship rate, until you start at your SF. The only hard deadline I've heard of is needing to begin working at your SF within 2 years of your normal school funding ending (or be considered delinquent). That's the scary part for PhDs with uncertain finishes and potentially not enough funding time.

I was offered a job start date about 2 months after graduation, I ended up pushing and just started this week.

I graduated in May this year and am still waiting to be hired by my SF. Apparently my SF needs to create a job posting for me and they are having problems getting it approved at the moment. However, I am still receiving my monthly stipends so that I can pay rent and have some spending money!

[quote="SMART2016_PhD2019"]I believe I am the poster you are referencing that graduated the past May and got a September start date. Although I don't know if this is typical for other SFs, I do know for sure that SMART continues to pay your stipend for the time between graduation and your start date (I was paid for May, June, July, August, and got partial pay for September)[/quote]

May have been you indeed! I also recall reading that you generally got one more SMART payment while working.

[quote="texag"]I graduated in May and just started. Looking through some of the paperwork they sent me, one of the HR ladies started signing stuff back in April, if that helps with the timeline.
I also received my full August stipend, even though I thought that they were just going to give me two years of funding (Aug. 2017 - July 2019) but I actually got 25 payments from them! Whoop.[/quote]

So at least two of you had some months delay. Are you two from the same facility?

I will graduate December and work at (formerly known as) TARDEC. I was planning housing purchase based on working January, so this shifts my timeline a bit.

I graduated in May and just started. Looking through some of the paperwork they sent me, one of the HR ladies started signing stuff back in April, if that helps with the timeline.
I also received my full August stipend, even though I thought that they were just going to give me two years of funding (Aug. 2017 - July 2019) but I actually got 25 payments from them! Whoop.

I believe I am the poster you are referencing that graduated the past May and got a September start date. Although I don't know if this is typical for other SFs, I do know for sure that SMART continues to pay your stipend for the time between graduation and your start date (I was paid for May, June, July, August, and got partial pay for September)

I saw someone in another thread say it took months after graduation (Graduated May start September I believe) for job to start. Is this the normal for most or is it very sf dependent? Wondering if I should plan my finances to still be SMART stipend for some months after.

Thanks!