<p>hi, I applied to several history phd programs and have a question about financial aids.</p>
<p>as an international student, I'm worried about financial issues. I'm applying to many domestic scholarships but so far no good reply. but I also heard that phd students are generally well supported and sometimes don't have to pay a whole tuition.</p>
<p>so my question is:
do I need to get a domestic scholarship to cover the whole expenses? or will phd financial aids cover most of the expenses?</p>
<p>I know it depends on a program after all, but just a general answer will be of great help.</p>
<p>PhD programs in the US should fully fund you with tuition remission and a teaching or research stipend which will cover low cost living expenses.</p>
<p>PhD programs in the US should fully fund you</p>
<p>Should is the critical word here. Not all liberal arts PhD programs offer financial aid to PhD candidates. It depends on the school and whether the department has funding available.</p>
<p>Top well-endowed big name universities, or, alternatively, large state universities will usually offer tuition remission and a teaching fellowship to its PhD acceptees. Smaller and less well-endowed universities may not be able to offer much financial aid or any at all.</p>
<p>Also funding of PhD applicants sometimes depends upon how desirable an applicant you are and what area of specialization you’ll be working in as some fields are better funded than others.</p>
<p>I also heard that it depends on your negotiation skill. Have you heard of any case where a student obtained stipend from school as a result of clever negotiation?</p>
<p>I should change my wording, you should NOT have to pay for a PhD in the US, though you would usually be funded to the starving college student level, not to a middle class level.</p>
<p>Negotiation seldom works on the grad level. Departments either have funding or they don’t. Telling one school you have a better offer elsewhere really won’t make any difference. (Unless, of course, you’re one of the very top candidates in your field in the entire US. And even then it might not help.)</p>
<p>And somemom is right: your teaching/research stipend, if you get one, will be at the starving grad student level.</p>
<p>What is considered a “good” stipend? Looking at some of the grad programs my daughter is looking at the stipends for RAs and TAs, as well as fellowships, seem to be all over the maps. I realize what is “good” for a humanities grad student might seem miserly to a STEM PhD candidate, but what range would be considered a pretty good funding level these days?</p>
<p>hudsonvalley51 - It’s kind of hard to say. It depends heavily on where the school is located, because there may be dramatic differences in cost of living. For example, a 15k assistantship may get you a lot farther in a city with low-cost rental space available versus 20k in Manhattan. A lot of it really depends on your field too. It seems like offers can vary wildly, with some people getting just barely enough to get by on and others being offered seemingly exorbitant amounts in comparison. Perhaps there is someone who knows more on the topic than I do.</p>
<p>Julie – You make a good point about the relative cost of living from one community/part of the country to another. I know that stipends at one of the schools my daughter applied to in the midwest range from $17 - 25,000 a year. She’s also applied to schools in Philadelphia and Baltimore where the cost of living is much higher, and that will have to factored in (if she is accepted there). BTW, congratulations on your Albany acceptance.</p>
<p>Somemom is generally correct but I should note that some PhD programs are now offering no funding for the first year (top programs, too) and many others are offering “tiered” funding levels so that some students may have a financial gap that others don’t have.</p>
<p>I think a reasonable funding offer is one which provides enough of a stipend to cover room & board. Our local U finds some master’s students at $1000/mo + health insurance + tuition remission. A place close to campus might run $400-70 each including utilities, that means a student can get by, especially if they make time to work 4-10 hours with a local job. For a PhD, which is a much longer commitment, not a stepping stone, you would want a larger stipend, something with a bit more breathing room. Then there would be the adjustment for cost of living in the area.</p>
<p>The common wisdom has always been that if you are good enough to have a hope of a professor position, you should be good enough to be funded, but yes, I too, have heard of people, especially ones who perhaps did not have a perfect path to PhD, have to self fund the first year in the past few years.</p>
<p>Thanks hudsonvalley51! I wish your daughter and anybody else in the midst of this scary and pretty miserable process the best of luck with admissions and funding. :)</p>