<p>OP-</p>
<p>I would barely count on trying to send money home with your grad school stipend. You need to do some things for yourself as well- save a little for a small trip away from school for a mental break. If your family already understands that you want to go to graduate school and supports you despite the low stipends and possibility of additional income, you should not feel the need to send anything home. If your family really needs the money, then I would forego graduate school altogether. You are essentially making minimum wage. Your program is only paying for you to attend there as a student- they want you to be able to attend classes, seminars, labs, and other relevant work. The extra money is for you to live on. They EXPECT you to spend your time studying and researching. For some, it’s a motivation to finish their PhD quicker in order to earn real money.</p>
<p>Also, some students still have undergraduate debt so they put the rest of their money towards paying it off in order to begin reducing it. </p>
<p>Take care of yourself first. Your family can make do. Again, if they can’t make do without your financial support AT ALL, consider putting graduate school on hold.</p>
<p>Michigan is fairly generous with regards to the cost of living in Ann Arbor at about $15-20K for stipend with tuition remission as well as some TAships. That’s only over the course of 8 months. And then somehow students may need to find additional funding or loans to cover their summer expenses.</p>
<p>When you get your financial package, read it carefully. For example, most programs will give you one through three years of fellowship support and two or three years of TAships. When you are on a fellowship, you are NOT obligated to teach and the money’s all for you. When you are on a TAship, you are working to earn that money. If you don’t take the TAship, somehow, you’ll have to pay out of your pocket. Which you don’t what to do.</p>
<p>The important thing for someone your age is get health insurance from the school. No health insurance, you’re definitely not going to be sending money home because you’ll need it for doctors and medications.</p>
<p>I live and go to school in New York City.</p>
<p>My stipend is $2,174 per month, and I disagree that this is not enough to save even in New York City. I save $200 a month out of my stipend, and live on the rest (my rent is $925/month - I share with a roommate). I only had to take out a loan to cover start-up costs, i.e., my security deposit and initial furniture and a computer. I am in the social sciences (psychology + public health).</p>
<p>I do realize that this is a higher than average stipend, though (it adds up to slightly more than $26,000 over 12 months). I live relatively frugally, although I’m not an ascetic. It’s definitely an incentive to finish and get a real job so I can make some real money, although I’m certainly not suffering.</p>
<p>If you want dorm style housing (if it is even offered for graduate students), it is usually a separate contract. Here at Columbia dorm-style housing is offered on a 9-month basis and is far less expensive thann apartment-style housing – you sign a contract for 9 months and pay the entire semester up front. It appears on your bill and you can take out loans to pay for it. For the apartment style housing, you sign a lease for 12 months, and pay monthly. You can take loans to cover this, too. I don’t know any graduate students whose housing is covered by the school (as in, they get nonrepayable aid to cover the cost of housing outside of a living stipend awarded through a fellowship). The cost of living in the apartment-style housing is comparable – maybe a little cheaper – to renting an apartment elsewhere in NYC with a roommate (this depends vastly on where you live).</p>
<p>Outside funding – no, most people don’t have them. NSF is very competitive and so are most external awards. Usually the external award provides an honorarium that the school receives in lieu of tuition (so technically, they are paying most or all of your tuition themsevesl) and you get the stipend.</p>
<p>Personally I have always been instructed to avoid programs that do not award funding (tuition remission, health insurance, and stipend) for at least the first 3 years of the program if not at least 5 years of funding. In my field it would not be a worthy investment for me to take out $34,000 in loans for 5-6 years (and that’s just tuition – we aren’t even talking about living expenses yet). I don’t think any students should pay, science or not – in the sciences there is too much external funding, and in the humanities you can’t expect to find a job that will enable you to comfortable pay off $150,000+ in student loans incurred from a Ph.D program.</p>