It is true that PhD students are generally compensated for PhD studies - tuition, health insurance, and fees are covered, and most STEM students get a stipend between $25K and 35K (usually on the high side). That said, you are right that there are additional costs that add up that it might be nice for your son to have money for.
Depending on where he does his PhD, rent might be quite expensive - I did mine in NYC, so the rent was always too high. He’ll also need to move, and there are some moving costs to cover, as well as the security deposit on an apartment. I had to save all summer to have enough money to put down a security deposit.
This is also a weird case, but…money to pay for his apartment, or break his lease, if he wants to do a summer internship. I couldn’t do an internship outside of New York because I had neither the money to break my lease nor the money to pay two rents over the summer. Luckily, it was New York, so there were plenty of opportunities - but it sure would’ve been nice to have some money to do this.
Yes, usually conference travel is covered some way or another - the department or the PI’s grant usually covers that expense. It doesn’t hurt to have a cushion, though, in case he decides to go to more conferences than he can get covered.
Scholarship / stipend varies by university. I think Princeton raised their grad stipend to 48k or 50k last year. This is apart from covering full tuition. Usually there is a budget for a set number of conferences per year that your prof will fund etc… Last year Columbia grad students protested against the university, and I think unionized to demand more — and got more than what they were previously getting.
My daughter is not in STEM (history) but is on a funded MA program. The TA stipend only pays for 9 months. She saved her money all year, living VERY frugally (which is easy to do in Laramie, WY, not so much in NYC ) so that she could travel with one of the professors this summer. It is not a conference but a trip (3 credits) for undergrads that he invites a few grad students on but they have to pay their own way. She will also do a 2 week ‘vacation’ and then 2 weeks of research in London. She received some travel money but it probably wouldn’t be enough if she hadn’t saved her TA money. She has to pay her rent for the summer (very cheap) and will be off work from her Starbucks job for at least 2 months - which is the job she normally uses to pay her rent, food, gas, car insurance.
So there may be things he wants to pay for himself to create opportunities. He might want a car, he may want to not have a roommate (my daughter has 5! but it is a house), take a personal trip. My other daughter, who is not in grad school, travels all the time to weddings of her friends from college. ALL THE TIME. If you are a 26 year old grad student, you want to do some fun things, you want nice furniture, you want to pay for indoor parking for your car, especially if you see all your out of college friends doing it.
Any PhD program worth attending would be fully funded, including tuition, fees, medical insurance. and room & board for all 12 calendar months. He should also be able to obtain some travel grants to conferences.
Since he’ll be funded for full COA, not sure how much extra you can put away in a 529 that will count for a Qualified Education Expense adn therefore, tax free. Perhaps a new computer?
Depends on how the funding works. If you are paid for work as a TA/RA then that’s taxable earned income and doesn’t have to be spent on room and board. Then you can use the 529 to pay for room and board (and use some of the TA/RA money to fund a Roth IRA).
I am not qualified to provide tax advice, and that isn’t the stated goal of this thread, but my understanding is that this is not the case if TAing is a requirement of the program.
In addition to funding from the “home” (the school where the student is enrolled in the PhD program) department for conferences, there are STEM apply-in conferences where the hosting institution pays in full (airfare, airport transfers, hotel, meals, lodging, etc.) for the students attending.
Is there already a CC thread that outlines the graduate fields included among those for which it would be standard to receive a tuition grant and stipend (versus paying tuition, room/board)? I know STEM generally falls in that category, and professional schools (medicine, law, dental, etc) do not, but what about social sciences and things like masters in education? For example, is there a difference between grad school for psych if the path is research versus clinical psych or does that distinction come afterwards (like a residency or something)? Or is it institution dependent? Upthread there was a caution against accepting a spot in a PhD program if it wasn’t fully funded, but how far away (from hard STEM) is that no longer the case? TIA!
I wouldn’t say that. Physical Sciences, yes. Social sciences, less so. Engineering? Lots and lots of Masters are full pay (or “employer full pay”) Most Math are high school teachers credentialling, so full pay.
Funding has to come from somewhere (e.g. government agencies, foundations, private corporations, universities themselves). Each has its own reasons for sponsoring the research and PhD students who are needed for such research. If a research position isn’t funded, it means none of those entities saw a reason to fund. You must then ask yourself why it isn’t funded and what that means for future career prospect.
Thanks for that clarification! I’m only familiar with the biological sciences and at least where I trained it was mainly a low-paying job to be a PhD student versus being a high tuition expense for parents or a debt-creating experience . Maybe this isn’t the right thread but I’m looking for exactly the feedback you gave (re: engineering, math) but across many different disciplines and degree levels, compiled in one place. Thanks again
Yes, the same rule of thumb applies: only attend a PhD program that is fully funded, and the top schools fully fund Psych or Clinical Psych whichever they offer.
OTOH, there are quite a few Clinical programs offered by private schools where you expected to be full pay. For example,
There are some general rules of thumb about funding but I’ve never seen a list by discipline and degree and doubt it exists. As far as I know, whether a degree is funded, the degree to which it is funded and the amount that may or may not be paid to a graduate student as a result of working as a TA or RA is at the discretion of each university.
Note that for Engineering & Math there is a big difference between Masters & PhD: PhD should always be fully covered, and between Masters programs there can be a difference between ‘taught’ and ‘research’ Masters. There are some ‘research’ Masters (aka ‘MSc by thesis’) programs (not many, and more in engineering & CS than math), that offer tuition waivers. As other posters have noted, most ‘taught’ Masters programs are money-makers for the university, so the most that is likely to be given is one-off ‘merit’ grants (aka discounts).
Would recommend your son look into the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. https://www.nsfgrfp.org/ While most of the awards are given to already enrolled STEM grad students, students can apply as undergrads prior to enrolling in grad school. It is a very prestigious and generous fellowship that sends a strong signal to admissions committees when awarded to an undergrad.