DD has an offer from first choice program and a better (+$3K/yr) offer from her second choice program. She is considering trying to negotiate a better offer. Is that done? She’s been advised that women typically don’t ask and so don’t get, & I think that is true but am concerned she may damage the relationship with her new program. Paging @juillet and anyone else with experience in social sciences!
It doesn’t hurt to ask – sometimes an eager mentor can come up with a bit of additional money via a grant to supplement the standard graduate stipend. It really depends on the specific program, in terms of how flexible that can be. Once when I was a grad student another department tried to scoop me up to teach a class. My mentor said she would pay me more to NOT teach the class.
We offer all the incoming students the same deal so while someone could ask, we wouldn’t respond with more money. Has she spoken to students at each places about other aspects of the offers other than the $3000 stipend difference?
For Michigan engineering, all university funded PhD students receive the same stipend, plus tuition and free medical and dental insurance. There is no flexibility to change awards. Students are actually unionized. Dues-paying to the Graduate Student Organization is not mandatory, but 77% pay them.
Cost of living is another factor your DD needs to evaluate. If my son stayed in College Station for his PhD, his stipend would be less, but housing would be much more affordable than in Ann Arbor. For a student heading to Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, or one of the Boston/NYC universities, the overall cost of living will be much higher than in other areas, so the stipends should need to compensate for the difference.
A lot depends on how wealthy the university is. First year TAs at Berkeley and UCLA make about $20K a year – enough to live on, but not a penny more. There are universities in areas with much lower costs of living that pay their students more. Cornell’s stipend, for example, is around $26,000.
It’s usually not done. Graduate programs aren’t really like professional jobs, where the salary and benefits are negotiable. Not saying that nobody has ever been successful at this - but most times, programs are offering what they can pay; many programs pay all their students the same amount, and so would be especially unwilling to raise the amount. Sometimes the stipends are grant-funded and so the limit is set by the granting agency (particularly in the case of NIH or NSF), and sometimes the university sets the stipend amount.
The phrase “women don’t ask and therefore don’t get” is really for professional jobs, where it’s the norm to negotiate one’s salary. Grad programs aren’t really expecting students to negotiate their salaries like recruiters and hiring managers are.
Also, $3,000 isn’t really that much in the grand scheme of it all - and if your daughter takes into account the cost of living and other things, the effects may wash out. Trust me, I know that for a grad student the extra $250/month (less taxes) would be nice, but when it comes to a very temporary salary like the grad student stipend, small differences in stipend are really secondary to the what the program offers in terms of career development and research opportunities. As long as the stipend is enough to live on I think it’s probably better to let it lie.
BUT your daughter is well-prepared when it comes to negotiating her first professional job post-PhD! She totally should try to negotiate then. 
ETA: psycholing is also right, particularly once the student is in the program. I have known graduate students to get their mentors to pay for all kinds of things that weren’t officially provided by their stipends or programs, should the student ask. Usually these weren’t salary bumps, but things like a laptop computer for a student who needed one to do work; expensive statistical packages; funding to travel to present at conferences over and above what the department would offer; maybe some funding to do fieldwork or remote research; those kinds of things. One-time funding is usually easier to grant than an ongoing salary bump, but in the long-term could have a similar effect depending on the amount.
Thanks, all!
Cost of living is somewhat lower in the area with lower offer so that should help. @CheddarcheeseMN had not considered checking with current students re:other aspects of offer, you are right to look carefully at all factors. DD has been out of undergrad for almost three years and works in another city, so she is keeping us informed - but we don’t get all the details, and she very much makes her own decisions. Hoping that her prefrontal cortex actually is fully developed at age 25!
Have passed on your insights and sounds like she has decided to phrase her email along the lines of an inquiry about other funding sources which might be available and indicating that she has already applied for a scholarship for graduate study offered by an honor society to which she was admitted as an undergrad. If I were her, I’d already have grabbed the offer on the table - but I can only advise, and rarely and gently at that.
Each university website has somewhere, buried deep inside it, an estimated Cost of Attendance for grad students. She can look at what these two places list as estimated living expenses. That $250/month difference may well be equivalent to differences in local rent.
Another thing to examine carefully in the financial packages is whether or not health insurance is included. Happykid is looking at grad school right now, and some programs report that health insurance will be fully covered, some state that it is “subsidized”, and others leave it up to the student to find and pay for their own health insurance plan (either the university’s student health insurance plan or through the state’s ACA plans).
My kid looked at the cost of living index in each area she had offers from. It wasn’t a final deciding factor, but she wanted to make sure it wasn’t unworkable. Also, a lot of students are still grad students after age 26, so the health care may be a factor in the later years of their PhD experience. Of course premiums and plans can change, but if health care premiums are part of the compensation, that is good. My kid needed it from the start of her PhD years, so that was particularly important to her.
Mine was offered a named fellowship at her #2 choice. She (under pressure from her parents, tbh) emailed her #1 choice and said 'I am making my final choice and want to be sure that I have full info, having been offered [Name] fellowship". They came back within 2 hours and matched the package named fellowship. However, the difference was in the terms of the package (teaching obligations were one element / don’t remember the others) not the $$.
Hi Yauponredux,
I’ve known a few people who have been able to negotiate their offers for social science related programs. I also know some who have tried and were not successful, but it didn’t affect their admission, so it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Echoing what others have said, I think it comes down to funding amount given to a certain department (many social science departments have had funding cuts rather increases), incoming class size, strengths of applicant, reasons for requesting more funding, who and how you ask - and other reasons mentioned by others above.
Here is an example of a female student admitted into a graduate economics program with a tuition remission and stipend who was able to request and receive more funds from her graduate adviser through an email exchange. This was done prior to accepting/attending the program.
I’ve asked permission to post the email exchange and at her request will keep personal information confidential. Hope this helps clear up any concerns
Original Offer
Dear XXXX
,
Greetings from XXXX! We had an extraordinarily strong pool of applicants for our MA in economics program—the highest quality top to bottom that I have seen in my six years as coordinator and I am very excited about our incoming class. I am very pleased to inform you that the economics department would like to offer you financial aid to pursue you studies here.
We are offering you a package that includes the following: 6 credit hours of tuition remission and a stipend of around $3,200 per semester. Your assistantship will require you to work 12 hours per week, likely helping a faculty member with research or grading. Assuming you make normal academic progress, maintain a solid GPA, and do high-quality GA work, you can count on having your aid renewed at this level for a total of three semesters, the typical time it takes to finish our MA program. So over the course of your studies the aid package is around $9,600 and 18 credits of classes. We are a 30 hour program so you will have to finance the remaining 12 credits (fewer if we are able to provide that 4th semester of funding) yourself, however, since you will be a graduate assistant you will pay in-state tuition (which is $485 per credit currently) rather than the far more expensive out-of-state level. Since these 9-12 credits will cost around 5-6 thousand dollars, you could think of the GA as essentially paying your full tuition and giving you a little bit of extra money for living expenses.If I have not heard an answer from you by April 15 the offer will be withdrawn, but if it is at all possible, please let me know before this date since we have other strong students on our waiting list for aid. If you email me back accepting the offer, the formal paperwork will be processed and sent to you.
Thank you again for your interest in XXX’s master’s program in Economics. You are an outstanding student and I really hope you will join our program.
Best,
Prof. XXXX
Her Reply
Dear Dr. XXXX,
Sorry for my delayed response these days. I wanted to inform you that I am committed to attending XXX’s MA Economics program. These days my family has been trying to secure enough funding but we have not been completely successful in getting a bank loan large enough to afford the costs. Though my family and I will continue to work towards securing the funds needed to attend, I was wondering if it is possible to offer any more financial assistance? This is hard for me to ask because I have already been given so much, but my family’s financial situation is not very good. I can provide details if you would like, but any further help would be deeply appreciated.
I hope you know I am committed and am now just trying to work through the funding situation. I look forward to meeting and thank you again for everything so far.
Sincerely,
XXXX
New Offer
I am very glad to hear that you want to come study with us next year. I have spoken to members of the graduate committee and we are going to increase your GA offer a bit. We hesitate to do this because it would mean that your GA will be higher than any other students in the program (since the prior offer was our standard one), but we understand that you need extra assistance and we really want you to come study with us.
Our aid offer would now provide 7 credits of tuition remission per semester and a stipend of around $3,700 per semester. Again, you can expect to receive this level of aid for 3 semesters assuming you make normal progress and do good GA work. (You’ll also work 14 hours per week for faculty members now rather than 12 as before.)
Under the old offer, I think you’d have needed to self-fund around $7,600. With this offer I think you’ll need to self-fund something more like $5,600. I know that this is still going to be a challenge for your family, but I hope that this will make things easier.
Again, please let me know whether you think this is manageable.