<p>If my acceptance letter doesnt mention funding, does that mean I am unfunded? I dunno what to do! Who can afford to pay for a PhD. That just doesnt make any sort of financial sense :-(\
Sigh</p>
<p>If there’s no mention at all just call in and ask what the situation is.</p>
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<p>Doesn’t have to mean that. I know several people who got assistantship offers extremely late (read: a few days before they matriculated).</p>
<p>I was surprised by this too when I went through the application process last year - the funding offers arrive long after the acceptance letters. It doesn’t hurt to call and ask, especially if you are getting other offers and pressure to make a decision.</p>
<p>I am interested in this thread. How long after the acceptance does the funding arrive for PhD programs? Any personal experiences would be useful. Why does it take so long when 99% or more are funded in many of these PhD programs? You mentioned funding arriving days before somebody matriculated. How does that work? Does somebody accept into a PhD program, and just wait to get funded?</p>
<p>I am trying hard to remember how long the funding offers came after the acceptances. I think some of them might have come at the same time. One school delayed letting me know about my acceptance, then called me with my admission and funding offer (this was in early March). Two of the other schools never let me know. One of them I kept in contact with closely and the graduate director finally told me that they just could not have a decision by the April 15 deadline, so I had to decide against them. The other school (a very prominent state school) handled the situation so unprofessionally I gave up on them early.</p>
<p>The reason it takes so long is that they have a certain amount of funding and they have to allocate it among their existing students first, who may or may not be staying and/or getting funding from outside sources. Perhaps this is not a problem with universities which guarantee full funding to all of their students - I wasn’t dealing with any of those.</p>
<p>Yes - people do accept a grad school without knowing about the funding. One of my friends did this - because she lived in-state - and right around graduation found out she had been awarded a prestigious fellowship. Clearly, someone who in the end decided not to attend that school had been awarded the fellowship first, so when they went elsewhere, it became available. This might have happened to me with the one school I stayed in touch with, but I wasn’t about to take that chance, especially since I had 4 years’ funding at the place that called me personally.</p>
<p>People sometimes send in their acceptances to a grad school without knowing about the funding because they want to go there so badly (or it’s the only place they got accepted) and there is a chance that they might get funding the 2nd year and beyond. Then they have to take out loans - or work 3 jobs like one person I met - to support themselves the first year. I was not about to do this. Why ruin myself financially just to go to a school that is slightly better than the 3 at which I got full funding??</p>
<p>So far, my daughter had one university include funding amount in the offer letter, 2 years guaranteed. One said 4 years guaranteed in the offer letter, but no dollar amount. The following week they sent some more generic funding information about how it works for most people. Another has not sent any funding letter. At the information session, none of the 6 in her subgroup had received funding and there was some explanation of how there is a wait list for it. </p>
<p>So, you should email the department liasion and inquire. There is another thread in the forum where people expressed that opinion that an offer without funding is a polite rejection. I can’t agree with this as it is possible something will come through late or last minute. But my daughter is not giving much thought to the one who hasn’t offered funding until she sees it.</p>
<p>My D had an interview last week at the grad school to which she had already been accepted (purpose was to get to know the school and its people better). She was told they had just been given their funding numbers the previous day and that they would first be parcelling it our among their current grad students. But she was told what she could expect in funding, although it was not **promised **until she gets the financial letter in a couple of weeks. (Her acceptance letter came several weeks ago.) She said she was told she was near the top of the list for incoming students for funding.
This is for a master’s program in economics and not all students get funding.</p>
<p>jyber209, BrownParent, katreese…thanks this info is very helpful and what I’ve been hunting around for. I’m in similar situation right now. The professors and faculty liason have been very encouraging on funding, however nothing is official until its official. It’s nice to know that this waiting for funding can be a regular and frustating part of the process.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure if PhD without funding is a polite rejection or not. I may not necessarily agree with this either. At the information session for newly accepted students I went to, virtually nobody had received funding yet. One of the heads of the dept said that occasionally people do accept and attend without funding for a semester. They will then always get funding the following semester if they are PhD students. I’ve read that that nobody cares about you if you don’t get funding…I don’t know. Your not a doctoral student until you pass quals, and I’ve heard nobody really cares about you until you pass quals too. It’s also tough to say whether the same rules apply in this awful economy.</p>
<p>Katreese, BrownParent…What field and programs where you looking at?</p>
<p>“Admission to PhD without funding offer” is certainly not a rejection. They are more than happy if you attend (esp. if you pay!), and as some of you mentioned, some programs don’t have the luxury to fund their incoming students. </p>
<p>Some programs provide fellowship for the first year (no TA), some make you work (TA), and some don’t or partially fund you. IMO, no/low funding can be a hint to you about the prog; of course you have to take into an account if the prog is still in its premature stage. Contradictorily, I know a lot of new programs in the Bio field which offer funding.</p>
<p>On the bright side, you can ask the grad adviser if you can end with a master degree after 1-2 year. Since you pay for your own expense, it should NOT be a problem - at least, that’s the case for one of my offers. You can apply to a well-funded PhD program during following year (assuming you do well in the 1st yr) if your grad adviser approved. </p>
<p>GL!</p>
<p>yes, if a school accepts you without funding, they want you to attend. but when people say you should consider it a polite rejection, they mean that you shouldn’t go to that school. if your only acceptances come from schools with no funding, then consider taking loans, but otherwise, it is almost always better to take the program that funds you over the one that doesn’t.</p>
<p>it’s not just about sparing yourself debt. if a program thinks enough of you to provide you with funding, that will give you a good chance at securing summer research grants and the like along the way. if they think enough of you to offer a fellowship, that means you’ll get strong LoRs from them when you go to apply for other external fellowships and postdocs.</p>
<p>it’s probably different for the sciences, but in the humanities and social sciences, there is a hierarchy for fellowship funding. if you don’t get a fellowship as an incoming PhD student, it will be more difficult to get a dissertation completion fellowship. without a dissertation fellowship, it will be more difficult to get research grants as a professional academic. and so it goes throughout the rest of your career. the exceptions to this are few and far between. a fellowship from a mid-level program will probably outweigh the prestige of partial funding, or just a TAship, from a top tier school.</p>
<p>I’m in art history.</p>
<p>My daughter is in Computer Science and the acceptances are for highly regarded public u’s.</p>
<p>I think everyone who starts a thread should specify what field.
For example, in biological sciences Ph.D. programs, everyone is funded with a stipend and no tuition required.
Often this entails TA’ing while sometimes it does not.</p>
<p>However, this would clearly not be the case in many of the masters programs or humanities.</p>
<p>What about doing your PhD abroad- Uk/Australia etc because there are experts in your field there, but those schools do not fund, even for their own students.</p>
<p>Thus it is not a polite rejection, it is merely the usual way things go??</p>
<p>Also, the timing is much quicker there, with acceptance of masters coursework and no TA necs required, once can complete a research based PhD in 3 years. Does that factor ameliorate the lack of funding?</p>
<p>regarding UK/australia programs that don’t fund students as a matter of policy, the same thing still applies. it is different for sciences, but social sciences/humanities students do not want to put themselves into debt getting their PhD because it is extremely difficult to pay off. there is no guarantee you’ll get a tenure track position or even use your degree in your profession.</p>
<p>i would still say if someone’s getting a PhD in anything other than a science/math/engineering/medical discipline that they should only go to a program with no funding if they weren’t accepted anywhere else with funding. even if the school doesn’t ever fund its students, even if the school has world-class professors.</p>
<p>getting a PhD is a job, not volunteer work or a privilege, and people really shouldn’t be working as hard as they do in PhD programs without getting paid for it.</p>
<p>only paying for 3 years instead of 5-7 isn’t so bad, but it’s not ideal either. i wouldn’t recommend it to someone who has funding options at another school, but that’s just me.</p>
<p>somemom, I’d say no. if you read more, the US phD model is the more highly regarded. It does not make sense to self pay and go overseas, if you can get in a decent U here. The years spent are years doing your research, after all. </p>
<p>If you can’t then do something to make yourself attractive for the next year and reapply, rethink it.</p>
<p>if you do get in the US, you can often do a visit year or sabatical later with those highly regarded profs.</p>
<p>Just to remind everybody of this thread. My funding experiences are briefly described below…man…somebody could write a ten page guide on graduate school funding. It is very complex.</p>
<p>For one school I applied, I got two different offers. One was on April 9th and the other much better offer(RA, tuition waiver) was on April 15th. Again, both of these were for the same school.</p>
<p>For the other school…I accepted…and waited…and waited…and got an really really nice offer a few days before classes started.</p>
<p>Does no funding mean a polite rejection. I’d say “no” because, these offers can come very very late.</p>
<p>Don’t go to graduate school without funding! Don’t! You will be competing for awards, letters of recommendation, dissertation funding, conference attendance, teaching opportunities (to put on a CV), and eventually jobs with the people who were funded (or came from wealthy families). If you have to work, even 20 hours a week, you will not keep up with people who can devote that 20 hours to their term papers, to getting to build relationships with their professors (eating out and going to the bars with them), etc. </p>
<p>In my case, I’ve financially supported myself since I was 16. I personally know how much having to hold down a job while going to school impedes one’s academic performance. And I personally know many people at my graduate school who have never worked a day in their life. Reading philosophy books and writing academic papers is the only “labor” they’ve ever known. Unless you’re a genius, or rich yourself, don’t try to compete with the rich kids. </p>
<p>Your professors will show clear favor to the rich kids because they’ll have the financial support to wait 10 years after their dissertation, to finally find a job. The rich kids can travel abroad with your professors, go to their talks in France, Belgium, etc. You will not. The rich kids can attend all their professor’s conference presentations, since they don’t need to work. </p>
<p>Where academia rewards merit, it effectively rewards privilege. If you don’t come from money, and if you don’t have funding, don’t go to graduate school. For the record, I got my graduate degree from Marquette.</p>
<p>I have a similar question to this, but it’s about a master’s program, not PhD. I’m looking into graduate school for TESOL. Is funding by program or just by school? As a TESOL student how likely am I to get funding? I can’t afford to pay for graduate school…</p>