By Brooklyn Draisey
Iowa State University graduate school programs have started rescinding offers to prospective students as departments scramble to respond to funding uncertainties.
Someone who identified themselves as an international, prospective Ph.D. student posted a letter online they received from ISU on March 5 stating an offer the student had previously received from the university’s department of chemistry was being withdrawn “due to current uncertainties with federal research funding that supports most work done by graduate students at research universities.”
According to the letter, even if the student was able to accept the offer, the university couldn’t guarantee it would be able to provide a graduate assistantship to them. The name of the sender and recipient were removed from the letter by the recipient.
“This decision in no way reflects on the quality of your graduate school application,” the letter stated.
The student could not be reached for comment by the time of publication.
ISU spokesperson Angie Hunt provided a statement from the university in response to questions from the Iowa Capital Dispatch. She did not provide information on how many offers have been rescinded from what programs. She also did not say how graduate enrollment will be impacted and if a recent preliminary injunction from a federal judge halting proposed 15% indirect funding caps on National Institutes of Health grants has changed this practice.
As of fall 2024, ISU has 4,170 enrolled graduate students and 634 professional students.
“Iowa State’s academic units are currently reviewing offers for graduate student admissions and apprenticeships,” Hunt, on behalf of ISU, said in an emailed statement. “Based on unprecedented acceptance rates and uncertainties with funding, some departments have made the prudent yet difficult decision to rescind offers to some graduate students who had not yet accepted their offer of admission.”
The university posts updates online on how grant projects and other federally funded programs should respond to federal actions.
Natalie Andreasen, a Nebraska student who has already accepted her offer to the ISU genetics and genomics Ph.D. program, said while she’s been assured by the university that her acceptance has been locked in with no chance of that changing, she’s still concerned about other students, both now and in the future.
“I feel terrible for these people, because you put in so much effort and time into your application…,” Andreasen said. “You do all this work, you do all these interviews, you get accepted initially and then it’s like, ‘Oh, sorry.’”
Andreasen said she accepted her offer about a week before she heard that some offers were being withdrawn. She chose ISU because of the recommendations she heard from her peers and the positive environment she found when visiting the Ames campus.
While she is still excited to attend the university, Andreasen said she’s worried about the possibility that the research she hopes to conduct won’t be funded, leaving her without a paying job and critical work experience.
She hopes to study how genetics impact certain diseases and disorders, an area that is heavily funded by NIH. If changes to federal funding impact what projects are funded at ISU, Andreasen said faculty might not be able to bring on students to work as researchers.
“You’d have to pay your way,” Andreasen said. “As a Ph.D. student, there’s no way to support yourself at that point, because you’re spending so much time in your work, where it’s like, if you’re not getting paid for that, you can’t really work outside of that, so you cannot provide for yourself at that point.”
From what she’s heard from ISU faculty, Andreasen said they want to accept students to help with their work, but they’re unsure if they’ll be able to.
“If they can’t get funding and I can’t research with them, that limits my opportunity of what I can work on and all of that,” Andreasen said.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.
