Grants and Writing Resources for McMaster University
Of the 26 Canadian students chosen as 2025 McCall MacBain International Fellows, nine came from McMaster: three in Health Sciences, two each in Science and Engineering, one in Arts and Science and one at the DeGroote School of Business. Each fellowship, valued at up to $30,000, pays for a year abroad split into a term of language study, a term of coursework and a term of work. The McMaster fellows went to Japan, Costa Rica, Colombia, Uruguay, Morocco, Thailand, South Korea and Sweden.
Help With Writing
Students book writing and academic skills appointments through the Student Success Centre's Writing and Academic Skills hub in Mills Library, which also runs short workshops on study habits and time management. Students whose first language isn't English can also go to MELD, the McMaster English Language Development office.
Dissertation Support
Graduate students have their own graduate writing support through the School of Graduate Studies. A graduate writing advisor meets students one-on-one about planning, organization, revision and writing for publication; editing isn't part of it. Graduate Writing Circles, facilitated by a trained writing advisor, met twice a week in three-hour sessions in Fall 2025 to keep students on track with their writing goals.
For bigger pushes there's the Graduate Writing Intensive, several full days of structured writing time in summer, with preference given to doctoral students who intend to graduate that year. The Graduate Thesis Toolkit, McMaster's thesis guide on Pressbooks, carries through to defending and submitting the thesis.
Essay Prizes
The Faculty of Humanities runs the Humanities Essay Prize in English and in French. Students submit an essay from a humanities course that earned at least an A-, and the competition rules award a first prize of $300 and a second of $75 at each student level from I to IV.
Research Funding
PhD students whose research takes them more than 200 km from Hamilton for at least four weeks can apply once for the School of Graduate Studies Grant in Aid of Research Travel and Field Work: up to $3,000 for a trip of three months, $5,000 for six and $7,500 for a year. It covers travel for field and archival research, visas, research permits and site entrance fees, and not conferences. The SGS scholarships page lists the rest, from Tri-Agency doctoral and master's awards to thesis prizes such as the Dr. Walter Smeltzer Memorial Scholarship for an outstanding materials science and engineering thesis, plus nominations for the Governor General's Graduate Academic Medal.
Where Theses Are Published
Master's and doctoral theses are submitted electronically to MacSphere, McMaster's institutional repository, through its Open Access Dissertations and Theses collection. The doctoral degree completion page walks through the file naming, licence forms and iThenticate check, and students can ask for an embargo of up to a year.
If you'd like an editor's eye on a thesis chapter or a research paper before it goes out, we can help. See our McMaster University dissertation and thesis editing and McMaster University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with McMaster University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your McMaster writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.