Hi everyone,
I’m currently a mechanical engineering student that will be graduating this April. I’ve decided that I want to get my masters in biomedical engineering and work as a biomedical engineer in the future.
I know that grad school is expensive and most Master’s programs aren’t funded so I plan to work as a mechanical engineer while living with my parents for about a year before i start grad school. This will allow me to pay for half to all of my graduate school. After getting a masters i an to go into industry, or possibly even get a PhD.
So, I’ve got a few questions.
Could you rate my plan, let me know what you think about it, and offer any suggestions.
Are there any schools that are known for funding (waiving tuition) Master’s students?
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks for your help!
I don’t see how living with your parents and saving will allow you to pay for for “half to all” of graduate school. Public universities will probably run you around $70-80K total for two years of graduate school, and a private university can easily cost you $100-120K+ for two years. Even if you made around $65K and were able to save about half of it after taxes, we’re talking about $25,000 saved after one year. That’s maybe enough to pay for the tuition of ONE year of graduate school at a public university. (Maybe two, at a really inexpensive one. Depends on where you live.)
If you wanted to save up enough to fully pay for the tuition and living expenses at a master’s program, you’d probably need to live at home and work for 2-3 years for a public university and 3-6 years for a private university, depending on your salary, how much you were able to save per year and other factors.
There are some programs that fund partially or wholly master’s degrees in engineering. Usually you’d get a research or teaching assistantship that would waive tuition in exchange for 20 hours a week of work. I am not sure what those programs are.
You’ve really got three better options when it comes to finding an affordable graduate program: find one that will fund a MS student (usually depends on the advisor and your grades/stats), go work for a company who is willing to pay for your graduate degree (many or most will, but the degree likely won’t be thesis-based), or just decide to go straight to PhD. Otherwise, I think you are pretty much stuck eating a significant chunk of tuition.
juillet, I was thinking if grad school is about $80k total, then making $60k to $65k a year I could save about $40k. I’m blessed enough to have my parent pay for most of my expenses, so I can save most of my income. My dad said he’d help me out as well so that’s about $20k. Also, I’m really hoping to get an assistantship of some sort, if not I’d probably take out a loan or see if my dad would give me a loan.
boneh3ad, I’d like to get my PhD one day, but I want to work after getting a Master’s. Personally I’m not sure that I could commit to getting a PhD as of right now even though it’d be the cheaper option. I’m definitely gonna look for programs that fund MS students.
Am I correct to assume that assistantships are reserved for the more qualified applicants?
After taxes, $65K is about $52K (give or take some). Saving $40K in one year would mean that you were saving about 77% of your income, and only spending $8,000 for the entire year - less than $700 in a month. Even with your parents paying most of your expenses, I think that might be a difficult proposition.
Check and see what the costs are of programs you are interested in. $80K was a lowish estimate for a public university on my part - I was assuming that tuition costs would be in the ballpark of $20K-25K a year and that you could live a frugal lifestyle on around $20K. That’s possible in some states with cheaper tuition and lower cost-of-living cities for their flagships (I’m thinking like UGA, or UVa, maybe Michigan, maybe UT-Austin, etc.) If tuition is actually more (like closer to $30K) and you live in a higher cost of living city (maybe it costs you around $25-30K to live there) than you’ll spend more. And obviously private universities and OOS publics are going to cost more, too.
Aiming for assisstantships is a good plan. I’ve heard there are more in engineering than in other fields.
It isn’t that simple. Each department has different rules about how assistantships are awarded and it can be based on your grades, your ability to TA a particular class, or just who your advisor is. Many engineering programs, perhaps most, offer assistantships to master’s candidates, they are just usually preferentially given to doctoral candidates. I know several masters candidates who had or have them.
@boneh3ad was dead right on this one, and funding is available enough that if you have to pay for engineering grad school you should really assess whether or not you should be in engineering grad school.
I most recently offered assistantships to two students who were middle of the pack in terms of the strength of their applications relative to others who were admitted. They filled my needs better and/or I knew their references and therefore had a better sense of where they stood. Grad school funding is a lot more subjective.
As someone in a very similar position, I wanted to add my 2 cents. I graduated from undergrad about 2 years ago with an engineering degree and have been living at home with my parents and working full time as an engineer for those 2 years. Currently, I am waiting on responses from the engineering master’s programs I’ve applied to for this fall.
When graduating, I told my self the same thing where I’d live at home to save money, save most of what I earned so that I could pay for grad school myself, ideally without my parent’s help. Unfortunately, Juillet’s math is sound. I’ve so far saved about enough for approximately 1.5 years of tuition at a private school at full price. And that doesn’t even include rent, food, insurance, and supplies.
That being said, not all master’s programs are unfunded. I applied to non-thesis master’s programs and the majority of them are unfunded, but if you are willing to do a thesis, work in a lab, or do research, they do tend to give you some funding. And, however anecdotal this may be, I have gotten scholarship offers from one or two of the places I’ve been accepted for a master’s degree, even without a thesis. This varies from school to school, some have an outright policy against master’s students being TAs, others will look at your FAFSA and determine aid, others will tell you to find external scholarships or loans.
My recommendation however is not to take a break between your master’s and PhD if you are planning on getting both. Applying to grad schools is a long and very un-fun process, if you can get it done in one shot, it will make your life easier. Working in the middle isn’t going to make you significantly stronger of an applicant either when you apply for a PhD since PhD programs generally tend to favor research experience over industry experience.
If your goal is a PhD, don’t pay for a Master’s degree first. Apply directly to the PhD program. You are far more likely to get funding and free tuition that way. Some programs will award you a master degree along the way, but many do not, unless you don’t pass your oral exams.
We just went through this with my son, a junior majoring in aerospace engineering at Texas A&M We were trying to figure a way to get money for a fifth year to get a combined BS/MS degree. He’s OOS and a NMF, so he’s had in-state tuition and a scholarship large enough to cover that. But a fifth year is not covered. As we talked more, he decided that he really liked research and teaching, so his ultimate goal was a PhD. I naively assumed Masters first, then PhD. Then I saw this note at the bottom of the page about a TAMU MS degree: “Students with the ultimate goal of pursuing a PhD should apply directly to the PhD program.” http://engineering.tamu.edu/aerospace/academics/degrees/graduate/ms
That’s when I started looking into this option. After a lot of time on this website and on the websites of the engineering schools my son was interested in, we figured out that it would be a waste of time and money to pursue a Masters degree when his goal was a PhD. Now he has changed his focus toward research instead of industry experience. He has been accepted into a summer engineering research program and should be set for 3-6 credits of additional research next fall. The GRE is done. He will need early this fall to focus on recommendation letters and his Statement of Purpose. Oh, and keep his grades up.
Just four years ago, we were focused on college visits and applications. Now, grad school applications are due in nine months. He has already checked out three graduate programs that he wants to apply to (he’s in Atlanta for a Georgia Tech visit right now). Time really flies!
I really appreciate you guys’ help!
The reason I’m looking to do a Master’s then go into industry afterwards is mainly because I’m not sure if I want to do a PhD. The way I see it is, if I am going to get my PhD, then I want to be fully committed to doing so and not wondering what it would’ve been like if I had chosen to go into the industry instead. With that being said, I’d like to do a thesis with my Master’s. If I end up not liking the research aspect of it then I’ll stay away from a PhD, but on the other hand If I end up absolutely loving research, I may decide to apply straight into a PhD program rather than go into industry.
Also, for the most part, I’ll only be applying to universities who award (or at least allow the awarding of) assistantships to Master’s students. A lot of the Biomedical Clinical Engineering programs are fully funded and even give a stipend with admission, so hopefully I’ll get accepted into one of those.
Beaudreau, I hope the best for your son!
@Omarrrrrrrrrr - Thanks. My next son is a sophomore at Miami (Ohio) University majoring in biomedical engineering with a mechanical engineering minor. He’s waiting to hear back on summer internships. He has one offer so far. Son number three is a freshman majoring in materials engineering at Iowa State.
Good luck to you! I’m sure you will do well.