<p>I will be graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in 1 year and have visited some graduate schools(Early...)</p>
<p>I understand that the admission process is a completely holistic process in many of these universities but I have heard from other students that people with a higher undergraduate gpa can get better financial aid packages:</p>
<p>Example: Someone with a 3.1 GPA majoring in Economics will just barely get accepted. Someone with a 3.7 GPA majoring in Economics will get accepted and will be offered various assistant-ships(And can apply for fellowships).</p>
<p>I'm not really exactly sure how everything works(Have had very little personal experience) but is this how the financial aid process generally works?</p>
<p>Students can be research and teaching assistants in order to cut down the costs of education. Fellowships also cut down cut but are competitive in admission.</p>
<p>My older stepbrother is in a PHD program in Psychology and he goes to school basically for free(He is a teaching assistant and only has to pay around $1000 per semester I believe).</p>
<p>Does anyone know more about this? Does it vary from school to school? </p>
<p>In my family we have four students in College and even though I want to go to graduate school funding it is going to be extremely difficult.</p>
<p>Admissions is holistic but do not think for a minute that gpa is not very very important! The second biggest concern about prospective grad students is how well they will handle the academic rigor, and the best indicator is a highly successful course of undergraduate study. Apply to MIT or Harvard with a 3.2 gpa and you better have a Nobel Prize to compensate (okay, I’m exagerrating) (Not much).</p>
<p>As to funding, it goes both ways, depending on where it comes from. </p>
<p>Some funding comes from professors, either because they obtained the RA funding through a research grant or because they are given latitude to pick their own TA’s. In this case it varies wildly from professor to professor, and often has little to do with gpa.</p>
<p>Other funding comes from departments, college, universities, and external institutions. Since they are dealing impersonally, and often comparing between wildly different candidates, they tend to fall back on the numbers: gre’s and gpa. It is still a little holistic at the department level, but much higher than that and it become a simple ranking of numbers - how else do you compare an English major to a violinist to an engineer? If they have funding for 5 grad students, they apply a formula and the 5 highest win.</p>
<p>Realize also that overall funding varies wildly from department to department - Archaeology programs may fund one student per year, but relatively few people pay for an engineering PhD. Further, that Archaeology student may only get a partial tuition waiver and a small stipend, while the engineering student will get as full waiver and twice the cash - it all depends on how much money the department/prof/school has to offer.</p>
<p>Undergraduate-Major Economics, Minor Information Technology.</p>
<p>Graduate- Want to go into Information Security, Information Technology, Informatics; going to visit potential programs across the area(I live in Michigan and I understand that U of M and Indiana University both have strong programs in these fields). Although moving out and away from Michigan seems a lot more interesting on a personal level. A lot of the programs are tailored toward the specific industry that the potential candidate would be interested in(I know that U of M has various specializations in the School of Information but I really don’t have any strong attachment toward Ann Arbor).</p>
<p>Still have 1 more year left in Undergraduate study. Still have time to figure everything out and if going to graduate school right out of undergrad would be the right decision.</p>
<p>In the humanities and social sciences, not all Ph.D. students have full support. In technical fields, usually they do. I have college professor friends (humanities) who are paying down their grad school debt 20 years after completion.</p>
<p>IT (and such) gets a decent amount of funding, from what I understand, so you should be okay. Since you are already planning to switch out of econ, make sure you rock your IT classes and take as many more as you can fit in - you will be competing with candidates with IT degrees, so you need to show similar preparation. Also, if you have not yet gotten involved with some research, try to do so - every little bit helps, even if you do not get published.</p>
<p>One last thing - my comments on funding where based on the assumption that you were looking for a PhD. Masters get less funding, and non-research degrees rarely get any at all, regardless of GPA.</p>