Grants and Writing Resources for McGill University

Of the 26 Canadian students named McCall MacBain International Fellows in December 2025, ten were McGill undergraduates. Each fellowship is worth up to $30,000 for a year abroad split into three terms: intensive language study, courses at a partner university, then a work placement. The McGill group includes an art history student headed to China for Mandarin and a bioresource engineering student headed to Morocco for Arabic.

Summer Research Awards

The Faculty of Science pays for 15 weeks of full-time research with a science professor through its Science Undergraduate Research Awards (SURA). In summer 2026 each award came to at least $9,050, with at least $5,550 from Faculty donors or the Faculty and $3,500 or more from the supervising professor. Students in B.Sc. or B.A. & Sc. science programs qualify. International students need Canadian work authorization.

Arts students apply for the Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Award (ARIA): $5,000 for eleven weeks with a professor, half from the Faculty of Arts and half from the professor's grant. Applicants need a 3.0 CGPA and 60 credits. Some carry the summer's work into a fall honours thesis or an independent study course with the same supervisor.

Where Student Work Appears

Students launched the McGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal in fall 2005. It comes out once a year, takes manuscripts from undergraduates at any university and charges neither authors nor readers. Linguistics students publish in JournalLing, whose fifth volume in May 2026 ran eight papers, among them work on Mandarin rhotacization and Pulaar infinitives.

Finished doctoral dissertations and honours theses go into eScholarship@McGill, the online repository run by McGill Library & Archives.

Fellowships and Graduate Awards

Incoming doctoral students can be nominated by their department for a Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, worth up to $35,000 a year for three years. International recipients also get the Differential Fee Waiver. Once enrolled, master's thesis and doctoral students can draw on GREAT awards (Graduate Research Enhancement and Travel) for conference presentations, fieldwork, archival research and collaborative research outside the university. Departments pick the recipients and set the amounts.

Most faculty and department fellowships in the Graduate Fellowships and Awards Calendar need no application; eligible students are considered automatically. Completed theses can also be nominated for dissertation awards, including the ADESAQ Prix d'excellence, $2,500 from the Fonds de recherche du Québec for the best doctoral thesis in each of three fields.

Writing Centre and Thesis Groups

The McGill Writing Centre's Tutorial Service gives bachelor's, master's and doctoral students up to seven hours a semester in 30-minute or one-hour sessions, on Microsoft Teams or in person in the McLennan-Redpath Library during fall and winter. Tutors work on purpose, organization and argument, and they model clear sentences and paragraphs. Proofreading stays with the student.

Graphos, the Centre's program for graduate students and postdocs, runs one-credit courses, workshops and summer writing groups for Banting and Vanier applicants. With Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies it also runs Three Months to Advance Your Thesis: small online groups with a leader, a Monday goal-setting meeting, a Friday review, and two to four shared writing sessions a week.

Thesis Rules and Editorial Help

McGill theses are written in English or French and carry abstracts in both languages. Each follows one of two formats, traditional or manuscript-based, and a doctoral thesis in the second format needs at least two manuscripts joined by bridging text. The acknowledgements must state how much assistance the student received, paid or unpaid, and that includes editorial help.

The thesis FAQ requires the supervisor to read, edit and comment on the thesis before initial submission. Final versions go through myThesis, and the final submission page explains that theses appear on eScholarship a couple of months after each deadline. With a solid reason, such as a pending patent, and the supervisor's agreement, a student can ask to withhold publication for up to one year.

Our editors give McGill papers and theses a final edit for grammar, consistency and format, and thesis writers declare that help in the acknowledgements, as McGill requires. See our McGill University dissertation and thesis editing and McGill University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• ESL Academic Writing: Overcoming Common Grammar Habits
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis
• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority