Students enrolled full-time in a two-year or four-year degree program at an accredited U.S. academic institution seeking an associate’s degree or bachelor’s degree. In the PREP program, undergraduate students are restricted to a maximum of 10 hours of work per week during the academic year, but are permitted to work full time during summer. Undergraduate students are eligible to collaborate with NIST as PREP researchers for five (5) years in this category. PREP researchers in the undergraduate student category may request one (1) additional year of eligibility under extenuating circumstances. The extension is subject to approval by NIST and the recipient and must show compelling evidence for requesting the eligibility.
Note that PREP cooperative agreements are awarded for a maximum of five (5) years. Though certain PREP researcher categories may have an eligibility of five (5) years or beyond, individual PREP researcher appointments cannot exceed the period of performance of the governing cooperative agreement. If a subsequent cooperative agreement is established with a given PREP recipient, the PREP recipient may request to extend a PREP researcher’s appointment, up to the maximum eligibility for a given category.