Joan McMillen, age 14, of Meridian, Miss., for his question:

WHAT IS A COLLEGE FELLOWSHIP?

A college or university fellowship is a foundation of money that is established for the support of selected scholars. People who receive the funds are called fellows.

More recently a fellowship has come to mean sums of money awarded to excellent students for a fixed period of time so that they may pursue special study or research.

The practice of giving fellowships began in medieval universities as a means of helping needy students. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England still maintain this tradition, in part, by giving their fellows the right to rooms and meals in the college to which they belong.

At first the fellows of English universities were undergraduates. Later, however, they became exclusively graduates, chosen by the head of the colleges and the fellows in residence.

In the United States, a fellowship is generally equivalent to a scholarship, except that it is awarded only to graduate students. In addition to academic fellowships given by schools, many U.S. industries award industrial research fellowships involving the use of university facilities.