PhD funding 1st year I am a Spanish student who is intending to apply for a PhD in electrical engineering in some US colleges. As far as I read in the web pages of the graduate schools, they financially support all the students they admit to their programs.

Anyway, in the application program they ask for information about the external funding I am asking for. I will be asking for It, but the period to ask for is after the university application is over. 

Also, lots of the fellowships i have seen are only for PhD students that are already in 2nd or 3rd year,while the TA and RAs are also starting from 2nd year(as far as I know), so I wonder how important is it to have the external funding to get accepted? And if I would not get It would I get funding from them?

Thanks!
You do not need to have external funding to be accepted to graduate schools, and your situation is the same as every other student who applies: most of the time, the results of the fellowship applications won't be known until after the application deadlines.

As for RA's and TA's, that's a field-dependent thing. You may find that some departments use "central" funds to support students in their first semester or even first year (especially in programs where there is a lot of coursework to complete).