Financial Support

The BBSP program and UNC offer full financial support to all our graduate students. This support includes a monthly stipend, tuition, fees, and health insurance. Financial support is guaranteed during training for any student in good academic standing.

The first year of the program is fully funded by BBSP through external and internal funds. After the first year, students are funded by a combination of training (T32) grants, their dissertation mentor’s grants, PhD program funds, and other internal funding sources. We encourage and support students to apply for extramural fellowships; we provide workshops, advice, and assistance, and many of our students compete successfully for prestigious independent funding from the NIH, the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the American Heart Association, the American Society for Microbiology, etc.

Stipend and Total Compensation

The annual stipend for 2024-25 will be $37,000. In addition, BBSP pays your UNC fees (currently $1,983), health insurance (currently $4,741 for the Blue Cross Blue Shield GSHIP (RA or TA) plan), and tuition (currently $10,552 plus out-of-state tuition when applicable). Total student compensation is thus > $54,000.

First-year BBSP students also receive a one-time startup bonus of $1,500 to help with the costs of moving and starting graduate school.

BBSP provides one of the best stipends of similar American PhD programs. In the table below, we show that your stipend goes farther in the Triangle (Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh) than in most parts of the country.