National Institutes of Health · General
NIH Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (U-STAR)
Funds undergraduate research training programs at minority-serving institutions to prepare students for biomedical PhD programs. Provides stipends, research experiences, and academic enrichment for honors-level juniors and seniors.
Whether your institution should pursue this comes down to designation and research scale — not a keyword match. Run your institution and see where you have standing, checked against the rules below.
Program facts
- Typical award
- $500K – $1.5M
- Non-federal match
- Varies by NOFO
- Eligible entity
- Degree-granting institutions
- Application window
- Periodic reissuance; check active FOAs.
- Typical prep time
- 12–20 weeks
- Statutory authority
- Public Health Service Act §487 (42 U.S.C. §288)
Who is eligible for NIH Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (U-STAR)?
These are the hard rules we check against. If one fails, the program is ineligible — the AI never overrides a rule.
- Institutions of higher education are eligible applicants.
- Restricted to Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU, HSI, AANAPISI, TCU, ANNH, NASNTI, PBI, or MSI-general).
Restructured under the NIH MOSAIC/U-RISE/MARC family; verify which mechanism applies to the current cycle. Amounts and timing approximate; verify directly with administering agency.
How Strategic Pursuit scores this program
Run an institution dossier and our AI checks this program against your designations, HERD research scale and federal-share trend, and agency award history — using the same rules, with thresholds tuned to institutional reality. You see where you have defensible standing and where this is a longshot that would burn a limited-submission slot — every designation tied to the law behind it.
The dossier isn't the AI's guesswork — eligibility is decided by the rules, and the numbers come straight from official sources. The answer your reviewer will check line by line.
No credit card. 30-day trial, 3 dossiers, 1 seat.
Related programs
- NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Track-1 (NSF)$15M – $24M
- NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) (NSF)$400K – $600K
- NSF Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program) (NSF)$200K – $3M
- NSF Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP) (NSF)$300K – $2.5M
- NSF Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) (NSF)$300K – $2.5M
- NIH Research Project Grant (R01) (NIH)$250K – $500K
Award ranges, match percentages, and windows are approximate.