F30 Fellowship Guide for MD-PhD Students

Published November 4, 2026

What the F30 Fellowship Is

The F30 is the Individual Predoctoral NRSA for MD/PhD Fellowships. NIH describes its aim as enhancing the integrated research and clinical training of promising predoctoral students who plan careers as physician-scientists or other clinician-scientists. Eligible students are in a combined MD/PhD or another dual-doctoral program, such as DDS/PhD, AuD/PhD or DVM/PhD.⁵ The mechanism was first offered in 1990.⁴ It is a mentored award, so a sponsor shares the application with you.⁵¹

This guide covers who can apply, which notice to use, what the award pays, what the application contains, when to submit, and what national data say about success. If you are still deciding whether to pursue the dual degree, start with Is an MD-PhD Right for You? For programs and funding terms, see MD-PhD Programs in the US. Statements marked as an Editverse search, inference or planning suggestion are our own work from the cited sources.

Who Can Apply for the F30 Fellowship

The candidate must be a citizen or non-citizen national of the United States, or be lawfully admitted for permanent residence by the time of award.¹ The candidate must hold a baccalaureate degree or equivalent and be matriculated in a formal dual-degree program.¹² Foreign organizations are not eligible to apply.¹

Timing matters. MD/PhD and DO/PhD candidates usually apply within 48 months of matriculation and no later than 24 months into dissertation research.¹² They must also have chosen a dissertation research project and sponsor before they apply.¹² At least 50% of the award period must be full-time graduate research training, and the F30 cannot support only the clinical years.² NIH adds that the F30 is generally not intended to support dual-degree students after year 8 of training.¹ A candidate may not propose to lead an independent clinical trial, but may gain research experience in a trial led by the sponsor or a co-sponsor.¹

Which Notice Applies to You

NIH runs two parent F30 notices side by side. NIH states that the two-notice approach is meant to promote equitable review of applications from the two kinds of institutions.² Your school’s status decides which one you use. Check that the training program supports your own dual degree, since the notices tie eligibility to the kind of program. If you are unsure, ask your MD-PhD program office and the NIH contact listed for your institute in the notice.

Both notices say the Office of Data Science Strategy may co-fund applications.¹² Each institute also has its own requirements and staff contacts, so read the institute table in the notice before you choose where to be assigned.¹

What the Award Pays

The F30 budget has three parts, a stipend, tuition and fees, and an institutional allowance. No separate indirect costs are reimbursed and no cost sharing is required.¹ Levels are set each year. These apply to awards made on or after October 1, 2025.⁶

Support can run up to 6 years of aggregate predoctoral NRSA support for dual-degree training, against 5 years otherwise.¹ That limit counts any combination of institutional training grant support, such as an MSTP T32, and an individual fellowship, so time already spent on a T32 uses part of the 6 years.¹² An F30 may not be held at the same time as another federally sponsored fellowship or similar federal award that provides a stipend or otherwise duplicates what the F30 provides.¹² Ask your program office how F30 support would fit with your current funding, since that coordination is not set out in the notice. The notice describes the stipend as a subsistence allowance.¹

What the Application Contains

The F30 application has six main pieces. The research is yours, but the sponsor commitment and the reference letters come from other people, so plan for them early.¹

Page limits are the NIH defaults for fellowship applications unless the notice says otherwise.⁷ The abstract is limited to 30 lines and the project narrative to three sentences.⁷ The reference-letter count comes from the NIH F30 page, while the notice sends applicants to the Application Guide for timing rules.⁵¹

Review Criteria

Applications go to a Scientific Review Group convened by the Center for Scientific Review. Generally the top half are discussed and given an overall impact score, and recommended applications then go to a second-level review at the funding institute.¹ Reviewers give an overall impact score and score three criteria.¹

• Candidate’s goals, preparedness and potential
• Research training plan
• Commitment to the candidate, mentoring and training environment

The Responsible Conduct of Research plan is rated Acceptable or Unacceptable and is not scored. Revisions are not allowed, but resubmissions are.¹

Timeline and Due Dates

Standard due dates are August 8, December 8 and April 8, all by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.¹² Each due date maps to an earliest start date.¹

NIH extends a deadline that falls on a weekend or Federal holiday to the next business day.¹² August 8, 2027 is a Sunday and April 8, 2028 is a Saturday, so those two deadlines move to Monday, August 9, 2027 and Monday, April 10, 2028.

Work backward from the due date. As an Editverse planning suggestion, not an NIH requirement, settle your sponsor and Specific Aims first, ask referees 6 to 8 weeks ahead, and have a full draft ready 3 to 4 weeks before the deadline so your sponsor and institutional office can read it. Your sponsored programs office submits the application, so confirm its internal deadline. If you are still at the stage of applying to MD-PhD programs, see MD-PhD Application Timeline and What Programs Look For.

What the Success Data Show

NIH publishes competing applications, awards and success rates for each fellowship activity code. The table below gives NIH’s F30 totals for each year. Success rate is awards divided by the application count NIH reports, which includes funded carryovers. NIH counts only one version of a project per fiscal year, and an application reviewed in one year but funded in the next is counted again in the later year. The F30 totals cover both notices.³

Awards stayed between 200 and 268 a year while applications grew from 570 to 760, so the success rate slid from a 2018 high of 42.4% to 32.1%. For comparison, the F31, which also serves MD-PhD students during the PhD phase, had a success rate of 23.5% across all applicants in 2025 (849 of 3,607).³⁸ See F30 vs F31 vs K Award for MD-PhD Trainees to compare the paths. The data were last updated by NIH on February 9, 2026.³

These are competing counts, so they are smaller than the number of active F30 projects. One analysis reports 833 F30 projects across 17 institutes in fiscal year 2022 and reports F30 applications at about 10% to 12% of enrolled MD-PhD students each year since 2015.⁸ An Editverse search of NIH RePORTER on November 4, 2026 for fiscal year 2022 returned 852 F30 projects, made up of 237 new awards, 602 non-competing continuations and 13 other award types. We did not reconcile 852 with the published 833, and the gap probably reflects query date and filters (an Editverse inference). The 237 new awards and the 239 competing awards in the table above are different counts.

Where MD-PhD F30 Awardees Go Next

A 2022 JCI Insight study used NIH RePORTER to follow every MD-PhD F30 awardee from 1990 to 2012, after removing DVM/PhD, DDS/PhD and AuD/PhD recipients.⁴ Of 1,015 awardees, 159 (15.7%) later received a K or equivalent award, after a median follow-up of 11.9 years.⁴ Among the 433 MD-PhD awardees from 1990 to 2007, followed a median 16.6 years, 101 (23.3%) received a K award and 80 (18.5%) received an R award.⁴ The older cohort was followed longer, and the authors read its higher K rate (23.3% versus 15.7%) as a sign that long physician-scientist training delays this milestone, so 15.7% is not a final rate.⁴ The authors conclude that F30 funding may help later grant success but is not sufficient for K or R support.⁴

The authors flag the gap between women and men at the R stage. Women and men received K awards at similar rates, but men were 2.6 times more likely than women to receive R funding.⁴ They also note that the cohort predates the broad use of K99/R00 transition awards. The data come from public NIH funding records, so the study cannot show whether awardees later left academic medicine.⁴ Treat these as long-run pipeline figures, not a prediction for any one applicant. After the F30, one possible next mentored step is a K award, covered in Early Career Researcher’s Guide to K-Awards and Career Development Grants.

Writing a Stronger Application

Reviewers score three things, so give each one its own evidence. In the candidate section, show a research record that fits your proposed plan, building on how you described your research in the AAMC Significant Research Experience essay. In the plan, keep a one-page Specific Aims document with a testable hypothesis and aims that stand on their own. In the sponsor section, show a concrete mentoring plan and a training environment that suits a dual-degree student. If your plan includes clinical trial experience, the sponsor or co-sponsor must document trial leadership, including the funding source and NCT number.¹

Editverse supports MD-PhD students preparing F30 applications, from review of a draft to end-to-end support across the Specific Aims, research strategy, candidate sections and revision. Work is delivered by email and chat. See F30 fellowship application support for MD-PhD students for the three service levels, or our MD-PhD application support page for the wider set of services.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is eligible for the NIH F30 fellowship?

Students enrolled in a formal dual-degree program, such as MD/PhD, who are US citizens, non-citizen nationals or permanent residents by the time of award. MD/PhD and DO/PhD candidates usually apply within 48 months of matriculation and no later than 24 months into dissertation research.

What is the difference between PA-25-425 and PA-25-426?

PA-25-426 is for students at institutions with an NIH-funded institutional predoctoral dual-degree training program, such as an MSTP. PA-25-425 is for students at institutions without one. Both opened July 8, 2025 and expire May 8, 2028.

How much does the F30 pay?

For awards made on or after October 1, 2025, the predoctoral stipend is $29,364 per year. Tuition and fees for dual-degree programs are 60% of actual tuition up to $21,000 per year, and the institutional allowance is $4,750 at non-federal public, private and non-profit institutions.

When are F30 applications due?

Standard due dates are August 8, December 8 and April 8. The table in this guide lists each date through April 8, 2028, with its earliest start date. A deadline that falls on a weekend or Federal holiday moves to the next business day. The first date listed, December 8, 2026, has an earliest start date of July 2027.

What is the F30 success rate?

NIH reports 244 awards from 760 reviewed applications in fiscal year 2025, a success rate of 32.1%. The rate was 42.4% in fiscal year 2018.

How many reference letters does an F30 application need?

The NIH F30 page lists a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 reference letters. Referees submit them through eRA Commons, and applications without the required letters are not reviewed.

Do MD-PhD F30 awardees go on to K and R awards?

In a study of 1,015 MD-PhD F30 awardees from 1990 to 2012, 15.7% later received a K or equivalent award. Among 433 MD-PhD awardees from 1990 to 2007, who were followed longer, 23.3% received a K award and 18.5% received an R award.

References

1. NIH. PA-25-426, Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Individual Fellowship for Students at Institutions with NIH-Funded Institutional Predoctoral Dual-Degree Training Programs (Parent F30). grants.nih.gov
2. NIH. PA-25-425, Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Individual Fellowship for Students at Institutions Without NIH-Funded Institutional Predoctoral Dual-Degree Training Programs (Parent F30). grants.nih.gov
3. NIH. Table 203, Fellowships, competing applications, awards, success rates and total funding by activity code and institute or center, fiscal years 2015 to 2025 (data updated February 9, 2026). report.nih.gov; Table 203 workbook; NIH success rate definition
4. Ghosh-Choudhary S, Carleton N, Nouraie SM, Kliment CR, Steinman RA. Predoctoral MD-PhD grants as indicators of future NIH funding success. JCI Insight 2022;7(6):e155688. doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.155688 (CC BY 4.0)
5. NIH. Individual Predoctoral NRSA for M.D./Ph.D. Fellowships (F30). grants.nih.gov
6. NIH. NOT-OD-26-044, Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA stipends, tuition and fees, and other budgetary levels effective for fiscal year 2026. grants.nih.gov
7. NIH. Page Limits, How to Apply Application Guide. grants.nih.gov
8. Fitzsimonds RM, Gorelick FS, Kazmierczak BI. Interventions to support fellowship application success among predoctoral physician-scientists. JCI Insight 2024;9(5):e175857. doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.175857

Editverse Research Team | Updated November 2026