<p>Can I get some information about how the grad school tuition process works, especially in a field like mathematics? I have a 3.92 GPA in my undergrad and I've been involved in a lot of EC's, Research, REU's, and leadership positions on campus.</p>
<p>I attend a public state university in the Midwest. I was in the whole "Go to state for free than spend $50000 at Harvard" mindset.</p>
<p>A PhD shouldn’t cost you anything. Most PhD programs in mathematics provide full funding to admitted students, which includes the cost of tuition (at either a private or public university), health insurance, and typically a stipend that ranges anywhere from $25,000 to $35,000 a year.</p>
<p>If you aren’t offered this kind of package when you are admitted, you should not attend.</p>
<p>ECs and leadership positions mean nothing for PhD admissions. Only your research counts, along with grades, GRE scores, letters of recommendation, and your statement of purpose.</p>
<p>juillet is right, you can expect funding in the form of tuition remission and insurance. (Although these days some do get offers without funding). Your monthly allowance is usually tied into a TA or RA position, although some may be offered fellowships so that is not required for a stipend. You may, however, be offered less than $25,000 stipend depending on the school. At my daughter’s school, all TA salaries are set by collective bargaining done by the teacher’s union and is quite a bit less than this figure. At many state schools you see offers of $16 to $18,000 including some UC’s. However my daughter’s classmate went to UCLA in Math and got an offer that allowed him to reside in the very nice and very expensive grad student townhouses. You can see reported offers at the gradcafe.com</p>
<p>These answers are absolutely right. Make sure you do well on your GRE and then choose a range of schools to apply to so that you will have some offers of admission with ful financial aid. Your research mentors are the best sources of information about the kinds of schools you wil be able to get into and they are also the ones who will write you the most personal letters of recommendation. You can also look at the [PhDs.org:</a> Jobs for PhDs, graduate school rankings, and career resources](<a href=“http://phds.org%5DPhDs.org:”>http://phds.org) site which has the results of the National Research Council’s 2007 survey in a flexible searchable database.</p>