L&S Graduate Support Guarantee Exercise & Template

Each winter, L&S completes an exercise to track long-term support guarantees extended to incoming graduate students. The exercise is completed via an online form. This process includes review and approval of departmental support guarantee offer letters, if the letters have been changed since they were last approved by L&S Admin.

For the 23-34 academic year, the online form, including letter uploads when necessary, is due Wed, Mar 1, 2023.

Support Guarantee Letter Templates 

For the 2022-2023 academic year, L&S required all departments to have their support guarantee offer letters approved.

For the 2023-2024 academic year, departments may:

• Use the letter that was approved by L&S during the 22-23 exercise. Minor updates are expected, such as updating the salary to the new rates. If you are unsure what letter was previously approved, please reach out to Lynne Prost (lprost@wisc.edu). The letter does not need to be submitted for review and approval before being sent out to prospective students. 
• Use the L&S template letter (available below). Make the adjustments noted in the template, such as including your department's standard appointment % and salary rate. The letter does not need to be submitted for review and approval before being sent out to prospective students.
• Create a new letter or significantly modify one that was previously approved. These letters will need to be submitted via the online form. You must wait for review and approval before sending out to prospective students. When writing your own letter, be sure to review the guidelines for support guarantee letters.

Template documents:

• New students: IncomingSupportTemplate2023-2024.docx

• Returning students: ContinuingSupportTemplate2023-2024.docx

Support Guarantee Exercise

The online Support Guarantee Exercise Form includes the following questions:

Your Name

Department
Program (note: if your department houses more than one graduate degree program, please submit the form multiple times)
Typical length of support guarantees for this program

Current year information:
Number of offers made to incoming students for the 2022-2023 year
Number of offers accepted by incoming students for the 2022-2023 year

Offers for the coming year (2023-2024):
Number of new support offers you plan to make to incoming students
Approximate expected number of acceptances by incoming students

If your support guarantee plans or expectations differ from the past, please provide details:

Support Guarantee Letter Plans:
Select one:

• We will use a letter previously approved by L&S Admin, or we will use the provided template
• We plan to use a new or significantly modified letter
  • After selecting this option, you will be prompted to upload the letter for review and approval

L&S Contact

Questions about graduate Support Guarantee offers should be directed to Lynne Prost (lprost@wisc.edu), Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Academic Affairs.

See Also:

• Annual Planning Exercises for Teaching & Learning in L&S
• Graduate Support Guarantee Offer Letters