How hard is a grad program compared to an undergrad? Yes, ENG 696 may be objectively harder than ENG 101, but it’s also worth more credit, and anyway the assumption is that grad students are smart enough to handle it. Also, a full time undergrad is 12 credits, while grad is a much lighter 8 or 9.
What I’m wondering is, what was your experience? In terms of stress, exertion, and time-consumption, do 9 grad credits equal 12 undergrad? More? Less? Is it even normal to attend grad school full time?
As an undergrad I took 4 or 5 classes each semester. My schedule was all over the place: very time consuming, and constantly working on unrelated homework assignments. (We all know that professor who thinks his is your only class!) So, much as people talk about grad school being killer, I just can’t imagine it being as bad as all that.
I can’t speak for everybody or for every program, but I can speak for my own experiences. I did a thesis-based MS in Mechanical Engineering. I’d say that a courseload of 9 graduate-level credit hours (3 courses) was about equivalent to 16-20 undergrad-level credit hours, the variation coming from the fact that certain project-based courses were considerably more time consuming than others. In my program, I knew a few people who took 12 credit hours (4 courses) in a semester to get their coursework done quicker, but this was generally considered unwise and extremely stressful; needless to say, I never saw these folks during the semester outside of class!
Grad students in a particular program might be smart enough to handle it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be challenging. At the graduate level, the requirements are often higher, and students are expected to learn significantly more on their own outside of class than they are at the undergraduate level.
Also keep in mind that most grad students have numerous other commitments that take a lot of time, namely research, which is additionally stressful because it’s not as simple as showing up, studying, and taking an exam. Research requires you to be making considerable amounts of progress on your own–while you will have an advisor, and might sometimes receive help from fellow students, the responsibility of getting good work done to make progress toward completing your project is ultimately on you. I didn’t take any classes in my final semesters, but research and thesis-writing was basically a full-time job. Most grad students also have teaching assistant responsibilities, some more than others. All PhD students, and some Master’s students, will also spend a considerable amount of time writing and revising (research) papers for publication, writing grant proposals, etc.
Good to know, thank you! So it sounds like you weren’t working an actual job at this time? What do Master’s students do for funding?
In humanities, an MA is rarely ever funded. One uni is talking about funding me in exchange for 20 hours’ work as a tutor. I thought that was a great deal but then I realized that for 20 hours’ work a week, I could almost as easily just fund myself.
The uni in question expects me to work 20 hours a week, plus take 9 credits per semester. Is that reasonable/possible? Were you working as an assistant/researcher during your time? Even if don’t take the assistantship, it should still follow that 20 hours is a fine amount of time to work a part time job.
My D, a CS PhD student, is working about 60 hrs/wk total. She told me she spent about 20 hrs on research, 35 hrs on 4 classes (3 3-unit and 1 2-unit), and 5 hrs on other tasks (mainly meetings).
That’s very reasonable, pretty standard, and - more importantly - I would leap at this offer particularly in the humanities. Don’t assume that you will be able to easily fund yourself with another part-time job. You won’t.
You didn’t say whether the funding covers a small stipend or whether it’s just a tuition waiver, but let’s be conservative and say it’s just a tuition waiver. Let’s assume that tuition at your university is $40,000 a year (pretty standard for a private or nonresident public uni). To cover that $40,000 a year with 20 hours/week of work over the course of just 30 weeks, you’d have to make nearly $70/hour after taxes. Even if we extend that out to a full 50 weeks (assuming that you work during the summer to pay your tuition), that’s still $40/hour after taxes. There aren’t that many part-time jobs for BA holders in graduate school that pay $40 an hour, much less $70 an hour.
That’s even ignoring the fact that tuition is usually due in a lump sum a couple of weeks into the semester. Some schools allow payment plans, but you still have to make 3-4 large payments a semester. Working for wages means that you will accrue them slowly and will be likely unable to make these kinds of payments when necessary.
The other important thing here is flexibility. A TA position is going to be more flexible with your schedule as a student - the coordinator is going to know that you are a grad student so your classes will be scheduled around the classes you are taking; there won’t be any weekend classes, most likely; most classes are going to be in the 9-5 hours, freeing you for evening studying or socializing. Even a minimum-wage part-time job is going to be more demanding of your time and less flexible around a student’s schedule than a TA position.
And thirdly important is experience. A TA position is directly relevant to your degree and gives you valued experience if you ever decided to continue to a PhD or even go into industry. Working part-time at something completely unrelated is not, and won’t confer the same benefit.
The tl;dr is that funding for an MA in the humanities in exchange for 20 hours a week as a TA is an excellent deal and you should take it. It’s also very, very doable and pretty standard in any MA or PhD program that offers funding.