<p>I plan to continue my education through the graduate level. How feasible would it be to receive an assistantship at a university? Could anyone give me a ballpark estimate of how much this might financially assist me?</p>
<p>You will have to supply much more detail. PhD programs usually provide a stipend and tuition to all students, usually with somewhat more funding in the sciences than humanities. Some require the student to be a teaching assistant the whole time they’re enrolled, some require only a semester or two. Masters programs are more likely to make you pay your own way, but some also offer a significant amount of aid. </p>
<p>As for how much that will financially assist you, shouldn’t you be the best judge of that? If you have the means to pay your tuition, fees, and living expenses, then it doesn’t really matter whether you are funded or not. If you don’t have those means and don’t receive funding, you can take out loans for tuition, fees, and cost of living. If you do receive funding, either from the school, department, or an outside funding body, you may not have to take out loans. If you’re asking for ballpark costs of graduate school, look at department and university websites. Tuition might be anywhere from a few thousand per year to $40,000 or more. Cost of living may be dirt cheap in a midwest college town, or incredibly expensive in NYC or another big city. </p>
<p>But that’s all assuming you want to do graduate school in the U.S., which you never said. You’re probably going to have to narrow down which countries, which fields, and what degrees you’re interested in before you can get much specific help.</p>
<p>I’m a legal citizen in the U.S. and plan to graduate there. My field of choice is English; my concentration will likely be in either creative writing or composition and rhetoric. I’d like to pursue a Ph.D. but don’t know whether I’d attend the same school for both my M.A. and my doctorate.</p>