Amano

Debated whether this goes in Tilted Finance, finally decided here because my question is more about what happens in grad school rather than about the specifics of loans, etc.

Anyway, I'm applying to PhD programs in engineering and I'm trying to figure out how much I or my family will have to contribute out of our own pockets or in the form of loans. I'm not asking for a dollar amount but rather what I'll need to dish out my own money for. I know that there are fellowships (national ones like NSF, Dept of Defense and ones that individual schools award) that you can apply for, but my question is primarily what happens if I don't get those.

I understand that once I get settled in a lab and start doing research, I'll probably have the tuition waived and get a small yearly stipend, so as for all these concerns about financial aid, where should my concerns be about? I get the impression that I'll need funding (either from my family or from loans) primarily for 1) additional living expenses beyond the stipend and 2) the first year of grad school before I start doing research or teaching. Is this correct?

A lot of websites mention fellowships from individual schools I can apply for. I know things vary for each school, but should I consder these fellowships as only for the top students and therefore something I should not rely on?

Thanks for all your help!

asaris

I don't know about grad programs in Engineering, just the humanities. With the exception of a few students, all humanities grad students who should be there are fully funded for their entire education; that is, tuition waiver and stipend. Different schools do this in different ways; Notre Dame provides this gratis for the first year and half of the fifth, but for the rest, they expect us to teach. Other schools require students to teach the whole time, or less of the time, or to work as research assistants, or something like that. Engineering might be different, just because of the possibility of getting a well-paying job. Schools know that 90% of humanities PhDs aren't really going to be able to pay back any loans anyway, so they make sure to support them. If most, or many, Engineering PhDs are going out into the public sector, the schools might decide that they can finance their own PhDs.

You should be able to get a more accurate idea just by asking the admissions people at the various schools you're applying to. They should be more than happy to give you an idea of what kind of money they're giving out, and to how many of their students. You can also probably ask current PhD students what their financial aid package is like, if it's typical, and if it covers living expenses adequately. Hope this helps.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

TIO

Like asaris said, the schools should provide you with this information. It's probably on their graduate admissions web page somewhere, but if you can't find it, contact their graduate coordinator and ask.

As I understand it, all domestic students (at least in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the USA, which is where I've looked) have their fees waived. In addition to the fellowships (which are generally just for the best), there are usually scholarships available for domestic students, usually comprising an adequate living stipend and often further allowances for travel and materials. To speak for myself, I will be commencing a computer science PhD in Australia next year, and my supervisor and my school will cover most, if not all, of my research expenses. Admittedly, these will not be large; at most, a small bit of computer hardware every now and again. If you're after time on a particle accelerator or volumes of liquid helium, you may have a bit more trouble, but you will probably still not be expected to foot the bill (if the equipment is essential to your research).

In short:
-It's extremely unlikely that you'll pay any university fees
-It's likely you'll be eleigible for a living stipend. Talk to the colleges you're applying to to find out more about the application procedures for these stipends.
-This stipend may or may not cover travel expenses. Talk to your college about where that money comes from.
-This stipend may or may not require you to work for your college. In Australia, our stipends don't require us to do any work, but we can do up to 8 hours of tutoring or lab demonstration a week to pick up some extra cash. Senior postgraduate students sometimes lecture some of less popular units.

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Strewth

mo42

At the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Graduates often TA for classes; the current pay rate for a half-time TA is $22,000/year.

__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

Suave

Sell drugs.

TIO

"If Centrelink won't get you above the poverty line, try theft"

Like Suave suggested, don't be above some down and dirty (but hopefully legal) ways of supporting yourself. Being a test candidate for the psych or med departments pays well, and can be a good way of getting a bit of cash in hand and a cheap feed or two. Live on ramen noodles, and always seek sources of free food. Graduation ceremonies are usually big enough that you won't be noticed if you put on a suit and slip in to the reception afterwards for an hors d'ourve or two.

Also, read this:
http://www.phdcomics.com
It's just a bit too accurate sometimes.

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Strewth

pcockren

Try to get a job first that has benefits that will either pay for your schooling or help out with the payments

gar1976

Pimp da bitches.

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Blistex, in regards to crappy games -

They made pong look like a story driven RPG with a dynamic campaign.

stingc

This is also true in most of the sciences. Tuition is payed for by the department, and you are given a stipend to live on. You might have to TA to get that stipend, which usually isn't very time consuming. I would guess that engineering is similar.

lpj8

I'm currently in Grad school for Psychology, and my tuition is fully funded through department grants. When I was applying for schools, this was a huge factor. Not all programs have the funds to offer every student a fellowship/assistantship/grant. In exchange for tution waivers and 15,000 a year, I work 15 hours a week with a professor. Some students apply for loans because they can't live off of the salary, but it works for me. My assistantship requires a great deal of travel, but it is all reinbursed. Its actually works out well, because I like to travel, and I get to go to lots of cool places.

Amano

Thanks everyone for all the responses. For everyone who has said that there are tuition waivers and stipends from research and teaching, what happened in the first year. Like I said in my initial post, with an engineering phd program, i'll be in the lab and i'll get funding from the department from doing research work, but what about the first year, before i get into the lab. was tuition waived from the very beginning? and was TA'ing an option from the very beginning?

asaris

My first year, I didn't have to do a thing, and I still got the tuition waiver/stipend.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

tropple

Well, there's always this:

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a

Stanford law grad, U.S. clash over cache of cash

PROSECUTORS SAY WOMAN AMASSED HER FORTUNE AS HIGH-PRICED CALL GIRL OPERATING ON INTERNET

By Dan Reed

Mercury News

Considered bright by her classmates, Cristina Leeann Schultz studied hard at Stanford Law School to become an attorney. But then she turned away from law to service a different kind of client.

She worked and worked and finally paid off more than $300,000 in student loans, under the stage name of Brazil, a call girl who roamed the country to turn ``high-priced hottie'' tricks, the federal government claims. Her attorney says she simply ran a very successful Internet escort service.

Whatever her enterprise, Schultz is now far from a starving student. She's done very well. So well that federal agents rummaging her trash found $2,400 in $100 bills in a discarded law book.

This all came to light after the federal government searched her then-residence in Oakland in January, seizing about $61,000 in cash. Prosecutors have not filed charges of prostitution, or money laundering or tax evasion, although they allege all three. They do say the money is ill-gotten gains, and they've filed an asset forfeiture complaint to keep it. Schultz is fighting to keep her cash.

Her Internet site is still active. But the last day on her posted schedule of appearances is April 23 -- just a few days before she married David Warthen, an Internet mogul who co-founded the popular search engine Ask Jeeves and is now on the board of Kozoru, a new Internet search engine.

Mystery swirls around Cristina Schultz. Her Web site says she came from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Try less glamorous Chula Vista. It says she's 26; try 31. She is, however, a Gemini, as she says on her site.

Records show she graduated from Stanford Law School in May 2001, UCLA before that, although they do not show her as passing the state bar exam.

Neither she nor her husband or family will talk in detail about Schultz, but her former classmates say she is a smart woman who boasted about appearing on the skin-heavy ``Baywatch'' television show at least once.

``She showed up to class and had good comments,'' said Ty Clevenger, now with a law firm in Washington, D.C. ``It's sad and it's frustrating because I think she's very intelligent. I think she's smarter than that.''

Rumors had always swirled about the pretty, busty Southern California woman in the rarefied air of one of the country's most expensive and best law schools. Among them was that she posed for Playboy magazine.

What is known, according to federal documents, is that since 1999 Schultz lived the high life, leasing luxury cars such as a Mercedes-Benz CL500, worth $75,888, and often having large reserves of cash.

In January of last year, a police report stated, her friend Brenda Tess Broussard was arrested for solicitation for prostitution. Broussard gave up her friend, ``Brazil,'' federal records show. It was Brazil, she said, who taught her the ropes of Internet prostitution.

An undercover IRS agent found Internet postings of 82 men who claimed to have had sex with Schultz for cash.

Schultz said on one Internet posting, the government contends, ``I have paid off 100 percent of my student loans, and I have tried to send a positive message to SF escorts re: assumptions about the nature and social status of women in the business.''

Her rates for being an escort? $1,250 to $1,300 for two hours, $2,200 for four hours, $3,000 for six hours, $5,000 for overnight, and $15,000 for three days.

It's not clear how Schultz met Warthen, a software entrepreneur who has done well for himself. His search engine, which uses conversational English in queries, was launched June 1, 1997. In divorce papers, he lists more than $7 million in liquid assets.

Wed in San Diego before about 80 guests, Cristina and David Warthen now live in his $1.15 million estate in Orinda. Schultz's lawyer says she no longer is an escort, but she still does give live chats on Sunday and Thursday nights on CameraCafe, a Web site owned by Warthen.

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+++++++++++Boom!

lpj8

Well, I worked my first year of Grad school,
I was required to work so many hours per week. You may want to contact other students in the program and ask them some of these questions. I'm sure that they will give you good information. Tuition waivers, assistantships, stipends and fellowships are very program specific. Some programs are loaded, while others don't have much to offer students. My program has tons of money to offer students, but programs just next door do not fund their students at all.

sailor

You work as a TA and still go into debt with student loans. Of course, some departments (especially sciences and some branches of the med school, at least at UNC) actually waive the tuition and give you a small stipend. Its really going to depend on where you are going, I would advise you talk with admissions/financial aid at the institution you want to go to--they are used to answering questions like this all the time.

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"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

metalgeek

come to Canada
you work as a TA, and your tuition is 3k-5k a year, TA pay: 17k a year.

*note offer only applicable to Canadian citizens

Dilbert1234567

to quote a great movie, blood and seamen. but seriously, im not quite sure yet, im in my comunity college, waiting to transfer to cal poly in a year or 2. and im not sure how ill stay on top then.

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Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen