<p>Columbia's graduate physics program states the following:</p>
<p>"Approximately twenty prospective Ph.D. students are admitted to the Physics Department each year. All students in good standing are supported financially with remission of tuition and living stipends."</p>
<p>The way I'm reading this, it seems to me that the physics Ph.D. program at Columbia is essentially free. Am I reading this wrong? Does the living stipend actually cover all of the cost of living in NYC? I'd be glad if anyone with experience with any top physics graduate programs could help me out with this.</p>
<p>You are reading this some-what correctly - many grad programs waive tuition for grad students and provide an amount of money/stipend - that can either cover your living expenses or at least take the sting out of them. It is sometimes handled as a monthly payment to you - over the course of 2 terms per year for ?2 years - for you to manage accordingly - but you need to read further - the stipend is provided for your services as a Faculty Teaching Fellowship - you would most likely have to have other financial support tho - loan/job - to financialy make it thru those years.</p>
<p>What you need to find out is how long is the fellowship for, and what are the terms? Are students expected to have a research or teaching fellowship? Some grad schools, such as Princeton, give a full fellowship for 5 years. Many others give a full fellowship for the first couple of years then expect students to be research assistants or TFs; others expect them to be TFs from the first (and this also can vary by department).
Also, keep in mind that stipends are taxable.</p>
<p>"All admitted students are supported for the PhD program. Typically they are supported by a Faculty Fellowship in the first two years, followed by a Research Assistantship for their following years as they work for a research group. What is listed below is just for this academic year. Usually there are increases of about 5% per year. Some students supplement their Fellowship by tutoring, teaching recitation sections or grading homeworks.</p>
<p>Faculty Fellowship Support for 2003-2004</p>
<p>Academic Year Support (9/1/03-5/31/04)
--Teaching Fellow salary (duties) $5,681
--Fellowship Stipend $11,363
Summer 2003 Support (6/1/04-8/3/04)
--Graduate Research Assistantship salary $5,681 </p>
<p>TOTAL
$22,725"</p>
<p>So yeah, some of the money is definitely contingent upon being a TF. I can't tell if the "Fellowship Stipend" of 11,300 is or not, though.</p>
<p>At graduate level in sciences, most students do not pay tuition. They are, instead, paid a stipend and tuition is covered. In exchange for that, they work more than full time for the department, on experiments (sometimes involving travel far away from the grad. school itself, and for long periods of time) or teaching labs, grading exams, etc. It does seem like a good deal and it is if you are passionate about the subject. You have to remember, though, that it's not enough to live well on and that it may take five years or more of your life when your peers are earning full salaries. You will not have time to work to supplement the stipend, and you don't have summers off. Google the grad. student strikes at Yale if you want an idea of the 'down' side. If you've been paying four years of tuition for undergraduate school, it does come as a suprise to learn you can get a 'free' education. Nothing's really free, of course, you pay for it with sweat and years of your life. Not a bad deal if you are truly passionate about the subject, just be aware that it requires far more of your time and effort than earning a B.S. degree.</p>
<p>It's a surprise to many that grad school is "free" for most PhD programs. </p>
<p>At the more selective schools they provide full funding without asking any work in return for one or more years. At others you earn your keep by being a TA or RA. As time goes by you either come under the umbrella of a grant your advisor has, or get your own grant. Again, it varies by school whether the grant requires work or is just a straight gift. You really need to research what they offer at the schools you are interested in. I know grad students in the sciences/engineering at an elite college, for example, who get a stipend from a grant they got and then work full-time during the summer at the sponsor and get a full-time salary.</p>
<p>Bottom line, though, is most students actually are paid to get their PhD; not a great sum of money by working-adult standards, but enough if you've just come out of the undergrad phase of life.</p>
<p>This has been discussed (debated?) in other parts of these boards, but let me summarize.</p>
<p>There are several kinds of grad student support available. In the sciences, it is common to receive support from institutional funds in the form of a teaching assistantship, usually for a limited number of quarters. It is also common to receive support in the form of research assistantships, from federal grant funds. Some places have also received NIH or NSF training grants to cover additional support. Usually, in the sciences, support will continue until completion of the degree.</p>
<p>Most of these forms of support come with tuition payments or waivers and a living stipend. The latter will allow a very modest lifestyle. But, since everyone else is in the same boat, it's not so bad. I do not recall if they cover health insurance. </p>
<p>In the social sciences and humanities, support is less common. Where it exists, it will frequently be for a limited amount of time. I understand, but have no direct knowledge, that support in the humanities is more common at top schools.</p>
<p>I do know that some programs will offer support to the top students that they want to attract, and admit others to fend for themselves. Other programs limit admissions to the number they can support.</p>
<p>BTW, some schools require several quarters as a TA as part of the Ph.D. The work is not too difficult, unless you have a big final to grade like I did - 8 pages of short essays (2 questions per page) for 300 students. I learned to read lousy handwriting fast. I also observed that quantity did not substitute for quality. It was very clear from the beginning when a kid did not know the answer and was just going to write a lot in hopes of hitting the answer somewhere. It did not work.</p>
<p>This differs not only by school, but also by discipline. usually, the biological sciences are funded well because new students start on an NIH training grant, and ultimately move onto the PI's grant. Being a TA is often a requirement of the training and students don't really see where the source of their monthly stipend is coming from. ie your first year you are taking classes and may get the same stipend you do for the second year when you are a TA for, say two semesters. After that, you may just be doing your research, but still get the stipend. Non-bio students may be required to TA more- i am not sure. again, it depends on how much money the dept. has. The posters above are correct- you won't live well, but you can certainly make ends meet if you live like a student. That means sharing apartments, eating ramen, etc. i actually put some money away as a grad student. Hard to believe now since I think the stipend was $450/month! (my1-room + bathroom apt was $130, and the cooking facility was a small camping burner. ah, the good old days...)</p>
<p>Ah, the good old days. In my Master's program (not even PhD), I was paid $350 per month as a TA the first year, and $375 per month as an RA the second year. My apartment rent was $175, and my monthly phonebill to H (at another school) was $85. Not a good financial plan. Within 2 months, I moved in with a 56 year old quadriplegic woman, took care of her alternate nights with another student, and got free room and all meals. It was an amazing experience.</p>
<p>Newmassdad is essentially correct.<br>
In the humanities and social sciences, some of the top schools offer a financial aid package to all the students they admit into their Ph.D. programs. Princeton may be the only school that offers full fellowships for 5 years. Others combine outiright fellowships (tuition plus stipend) for the first couple of years, then expect students to be TFs for the rest of their program. After the first two years, tuition is reduced (but so is the amount of the fellowship); for students who are TFs, tuition is usually waived. I believe that in many places, health insurance is covered by the fellowship (at some universities, it may be mandatory).
How many students a TF is expected to teach depends on the institution. Some years ago, sections were capped at 25 at Berkeley, and 18 at Yale and Harvard. A TF probably has to lead 2 or more sections in a year to make ends meet.
This is the basic scenario. In practice. the better endowed schools have a variety of fellowships students can compete for; there are also external fellowships such as Fulbright to conduct fieldwork, summer fellowships and fellowships for writing up the dissertation. When graduate students go on the job market, it is good to be able to point to teaching experience. TFs may therefore seek to lead sections in different courses to build up their cv.
Newmassdad: I recently talked to a recent Ivy humanities Ph.D. who is now teaching at a LAC. He is still reeling under the realization that he will have 100 exams and papers to grade by himself (no TF), from two courses capped at 50 each, on top of preparing lectures. When he was a TF, teaching two sections, he had fewer than 40 papers and exams to grade and no lectures to prepare. Nostalgia for the good ol' days as a starving graduate student has already hit.</p>
<p>No self-respecting PHd student at a good grad school is paying his/her own way. Even the cash strapped big state universitites fund nearly all the candidates they want with a TA or RA position that includes free tuition, a decent stipend, health insurance etc.</p>
<p>Yes, mikemac, it did come as a rather large surprise. I'm faced with a choice of taking on quite a bit of debt at Columbia or getting a free ride at Alabama for my undergraduate work and I didn't want to take on too much undergrad debt because I am planning on going on to get my Ph.D. and I assumed that grad school would be pretty expensive. It's very good to know that I'll be able to work it off while I'm there; thanks for all of the responses.</p>
<p>as barrons posted, even large state schools often fund students. But as has been pointed out, the odds are going to be much better if they want you.</p>
<p>I looked at UCLA history, to pick a humanities dept and school at random, and they say " The Department offers a number of fellowships to incoming students. Fellowship packages normally grant four or five years of funding (with various combinations of fellowships and teaching assistantships). We highly recommend that all applicants apply for other forms of financial assistance, such as work-study. External grants, etc."</p>
<p>I do not know if this is the case at Columbia, but at many universities the tuition and living stipends are provided by outside grant money. As a grad student at Cornell I was supported by a National Health Service fellowship which paid my tuition and a monthly cash stipend of $200/month, big bucks for a grad student in 1975!!! I think NHS functions were rolled into the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.</p>
<p>However, a warning. Usually these outside fellowship, traineeships. etc are available for a finite time or associated with a particular research project. Mine lasted for only 2 years. For the first 3-1/2 years I was supported by the university-tuition + a monthly stipend of $???. The amount has slipped my mind.</p>
<p>At most research universities, most science/engineering grad students, particularly those in a PhD programs, are well subsitized. That is where much of that grant money goes. There is much less grant money available in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Therefore less of their students are probably subsidized.</p>
<p>My story is very similar to originaloog's. Because of the problems I had after I was originally accepted/rejected/provisionally accepted to the PhD program at Ga Tech (long story posted before in another thread), I was NOT supported for my first year of grad school. I paid for it by getting a teaching position at DeVry University. After the first year mess had straightened itself out, I had a fellowship from (what was then called) the U.S. Public Health Service. It was an outside fellowship that paid a fixed amount per year that was enough to cover tuition and a small stipend per month ($$$ amt slips my mind also). I had certain course specialization and research requirements for the fellowship.</p>
<p>That outside fellowship was a bit unusual. In my day ("The Dark Ages") a lot of MS students were supported by the companies that sent them (it was common back then for large companies to support advanced degrees for their employees) or by the military. Almost all PhD students were supported by research grants. The thesis - obviously - was related to the research that paid you.</p>