<p>I remember for undergrad that you can play multiple schools off of each other in order to negotiate a higher financial aid package. Does the same apply for graduate school? If I get into more than one school can I get them to bid up their offers, or are stipends preset by budget and there's not much they can do about it?</p>
<p>If you’re a really really strong candidate that they really really want, yes this sometimes works. But as you said, it is highly dependent on budgets and grants.</p>
<p>I understand that this is done, but I think one has to be a bit more delicate than was the case in negotiating for undergrad financial aid. For instance, instead of outright asking for more money by citing that you have such and such offers from those schools, you may say that you are still unsure of your decision and financial constraints are a factor due to the high cost of living in [location of grad school], blablabla.</p>
<p>If a program really wants you, it may throw in a special fellowship or opportunity to make your package more attractive; however, it is unusual for a program to increase a stipend just because another university offers you a better one. Stipends are tied to both cost-of-living and program/university resources. A program in NYC is likely to offer a higher stipend than one in Wisconsin – although this isn’t always so. The range in PhD stipends in the sciences seems to be $27,000 - $32,000, with the upper end more rare than the lower one. (The NSF graduate fellowship stipend is $30,000, and it represents an increase for most graduate students.)</p>
<p>could this look unfavorably though? like if the school has two pretty close applicants but one asks for more money. could they pick the other applicant instead?</p>
<p>FWIW, your stipend could go up depending on the generosity of your PI. Mine has a policy that graduate students who get their own funding will receive a 5 grand bump in their salary. Still a pittance, but a pittance + 5000.00</p>
<p>@Cogneuro, if you are accepted, then you are accepted, and the offer shouldn’t be rescinded just because you ask about the stipend. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that most stipends are NOT negotiable.</p>
<p>mom- what do you define as “sciences”? I think I read on the Northwestern website that their stipend is around $22k for engineering. The stipend for my current school is around $20k for engineering, and it is in one of the most expensive places to live in the US.</p>
<p>Interesting, Eisenmann. An NSF fellowship would be a huge jump for someone like you.</p>
<p>Most of my (albeit limited) knowledge of current stipend amounts in the sciences comes from the biological sciences and, to a lesser degree, computer science programs. </p>
<p>Here’s a thread from 2007:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/299009-graduate-schools-stipends.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/299009-graduate-schools-stipends.html</a></p>
<p>Chemistry was quoted as being from $25,000-30,000. Bioinformatics at $25,000 -$28,000. Harvard biomedical sciences at $28,000. Those numbers have likely risen slightly since then. I know the stipends last year for neuroscience were quoted from $26,000-$31,000. (Note: these are PhD programs.)</p>
<p>From Duke’s Computational Biology and Bioinformatics website:
</p>
<p>There’s an interesting web site (which I’m not going to link to since it’s a non-educational website and therefore against CC’s rules, but search for “Best Graduate School Stipends”) that lists current stipends for biomedical programs. The “$30,000 Club” inlcudes GSK, Rockefeller, Sackler, Columbia, and Weill Cornell, all biomedical programs in NYC. Boston University Medical Center also equals or tops $30,000. The site also adjusts some stipends to account for cost of living, which makes them equivalent to getting more than $50,000 in NYC – Rochester, Cornell/Ithaca, WUSTL, and a few more.</p>
<p>Obviously, stipends vary depending on school, location, field, etc.</p>
<p>I think medical programs tend to be well funded versus a lot of other programs, even those in engineering fields. I know back when I was doing grad applications with my friends in 2006, I got the highest stipend of all my friends (in a relatively high cost of living area) and it was in the mid-20s.</p>
<p>I wonder if there’s a strong correlation between grad student stipend and the overhead rate at various schools.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. These numbers everyone are quoting, are they for 9-months or 12?</p>
<p>Research assistantships are usually 12-month positions.</p>
<p>I haven’t heard of any for 9 months. I imagine if you wind up with some fellowship requiring you to travel to a different location than your school for the summer and the fellowship mentions a bonus in your stipend from them over the summer, your normal stipend from your group would be cut, as well.</p>
<p>The standard funding period in my field (math) seems to be 9 months, with a majority of graduate students being supported on teaching assistantships or internal fellowships. External fellowships and research assistantships may provide 12-month support, but they are not nearly as common as they are in some other fields.</p>
<p>Wow, 20k for 12 months sounds difficult to work with. How common is it for grad students with funding to still take out loans to supplement their income?</p>
<p>(Funny story: a friend of mine, an economics PhD student, was considering taking out low-interest, deferred payment student loans to play the stock market. If he did well, he wouldn’t have to pay a cent of interest and gets to pocket the profits.)</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school (U Wisconsin at Madison) students who are T.A.
's get 9 months funding. Not sure on RA’s but she was able to get a RA position over the summer.</p>
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<p>This varies by program and funding level. I live in NYC and my school’s stipend is generous enough that I don’t have to borrow to supplement my income (I only borrowed a bit to help with relocation costs, which I didn’t have because I came straight from undergrad). But there are some programs in the city that pay around $20K or less for 12 months and that simply isn’t enough to live on in this city, so I know some of those students borrow loans to top off their income.</p>