<p>Hello,</p>
<p>So I got accepted to a program that I am really into (my only acceptance so far) but they said they cant offer aid. I didnt know PhD programs honestly expected you to pay for 4 or so yrs of school out of your pocket. It doesnt make much sense!! Any ideas on if there is anything I can do?</p>
<p>Work 24/7 until death.</p>
<p>this is going to be extremely unhelpful, but i have always been advised to consider an acceptance without funding to a PhD program as a polite rejection. even if you could win a prestigious fellowship large enough to cover your living expenses, you still need tens of thousands of dollars for tuition. i would strongly advise against putting yourself into debt for a 4-5 year program.</p>
<p>sorry, i know that's not helpful or good news.</p>
<p>ask the program if they may have funding or tuition remission available in the second year and beyond. paying for one year yourself isn't great either, but if you can get other awards or funding or TA positions to cover the other years, then that's great.</p>
<p>ask if it is possible to defer your acceptance for 1 year and be reconsidered for funding next year. if they say yes, consider deferring enrollment and applying to programs again next year. hopefully the economy will be a bit better, and you can maybe tweak your applications again as well, and maybe you'll have better luck next year with getting an offer with funding. i've heard tons of stories about people applying two or three times to grad school before getting offers with funding, but when they do get in they're usually accepted to top-notch universities.</p>
<p>Strange Light thanks</p>
<p>Could I PM you about some questions I have? Also what field are you in? I am environmental engineering!</p>
<p>Work a lab tech job and apply to different programs in a couple of years. There is no high pay off at the end of a Phd that would reasonably allow you to recoupe the costs they want you to incur.</p>
<p>What is the feeling on PhD abroad wherein funding is not normally offered? So, it is not a polite rejection, it is the way things are done.</p>
<p>DD's specialty sub-field (that fit we all hear about) has her in at a UK PhD, but in general they don't fund. She has applied for a couple of associated awards and is waiting to hear, but is really interested in their program and the whole living overseas experience.</p>
<p>Thoughts? Comments? Things she ought to know to consider?</p>
<p>DO NOT DO THE PHD WITHOUT FUNDING. Period.</p>
<p>You're devoting yourself to 4 to 5 years of your life when you could be making decent money elsewhere. The PhD is a JOB. Would you work at a job that requires 50-60 hours of work for free? Even if i t's something you love to do?</p>
<p>I'm in a similar situation, but there is a chance that I'll be funded in my second year, if I sufficiently impress the faculty, as I was hoping to do anyway. I do not consider my acceptance a soft rejection because this department only gives funding to a minority of its admitted students. My possible adviser is "famous" in my subfield and could probably help me secure funding from the department if I do well. Unfortunately, it seems like a bit of a gamble because of the current state of the economy and because the school is in the UC system. I can wrangle together funding for the first year, but if I don't get funding after that, I probably won't be able to continue with the problem. I have another acceptance and don't know about funding yet. If I do get funding from them, it will be a difficult choice:</p>
<p>Prestigious department (top 10), VERY well-regarded adviser, no guarantee of funding but a possibility for funding after first year</p>
<p>vs. less prestigious "name" (though department ranked in top 25), guaranteed TA/RAships.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what I would do even if funding and academics were the only considerations. But there are also personal factors. I'd much prefer the UC school in terms of location, for both my own and my SO's sake. To attend the other school, I'd have to move to the East Coast, to a state where I know practically no one and I'm not sure I or my partner is ready to do that. And then there's the added factor of my younger sister entering undergrad, and my not wanting my grad school to affect her undergrad choice. So, for me this decision is really hard and I feel like I might have strong reason to regret my decision whatever I end up deciding. Sigh.</p>
<p>There is Option C of re-applying, but I really do not want to go through this harrowing process again. UC school really is the perfect fit in terms of education and personal life.</p>
<p>Can you TA? I second what the others said and reapply next year. Our tuition is ~$38000/year (for private school). There is no way to repay this type of money on PhD graduate stipend. Working a year will only help your application so you can get a funded position next year.</p>
<p>Someone told me a PhD without funding is just a polite rejection. The faculty don't really care about you. Don't do it. There is no guarantee you will receive funding in your second year and beyond to recuperate your losses.</p>
<p>sra08-</p>
<p>I would go to the top25 school or reapply next year. Attending a top25 school will definately not hurt you career wise. First year is stressful enough (im a PhD grad student), I would not want to worry about impressing people enough to secure the funded position. If you are already accepted in to the advisor's lab, can you see if they would have the money to fund you themselves (assuming they really want you)? Would working in that department for a year help you secure funding if you were to apply in a year?</p>
<p>Good luck</p>
<p>I'm a humanities person, so we don't get lab funding or anything like that. I'm visiting both schools and meeting with prospective advisers. When I meet my prospective adviser at the UC school (for the second time, actually), I'll try to find out more about funding and what she can do for me once I'm there. I've spoken to a recent graduate of the school who thinks that doing well as Professor X's Student will make funding quite likely. The arrogant side of me thinks I can do this, and, after all, I've always impressed my teachers, including profs at a selective LAC. But at the same time, it is rather scary.</p>
<p>I'd be more amenable to attending the other school--if indeed I get funding--if not for my personal situation, which is rather complicated. So I might just have to re-apply.</p>
<p>More good advice here: grad</a> skool rulz #9 - don’t pay for grad school orgtheory.net</p>
<p>Shea, yes you can pm me. but i'm in latin american history, i don't know how much i could help with your particular field. feel free to ask any questions you think i might be able to answer, though.</p>
<p>sra08, i recognize you from the grad cafe boards. :)</p>
<p>the UC system is an oddity. i've been told by professors outside the UC system that they are always short on funding and always running out of money, even when the economy is doing well. unless these promises of second-year funding come with a written guarantee, i'd be very wary.</p>
<p>that said, i had been in contact with a prof at UCLA when i was thinking of applying there, and she told me that many students who don't get first year funding will take loans for the first year and then get funded years 2-5. she said it was a fairly common occurrence. so, at the very least, you wouldn't be the only one there paying for your first year yourself. however, this conversation was before the economy really took a dive last year, and so i imagine prospects for funding are even worse now.</p>
<p>i, too, would suggest going to the top 25 school instead of the top 10 school unless you can get, in writing, a guarantee from the UC school that they will completely fund you years 2-5. if it's just a verbal agreement, or they're saying you "might" get funding, don't do it. you'll go there, put yourself into debt for one year, and then be told they can't fund you for your second year either. you'll have to drop out, or apply to other schools, or put yourself even deeper in debt. no good.</p>
<p>maybe go to the top 25 school, get your MA, and reapply to PhD programs afterward. you could still end up doing your dissertation at the UC school and you won't have put yourself into debt in the process.</p>
<p>oh, and for what it's worth... i decided not to apply to UCLA solely because they said they won't fund international students in their first year. i know an international student who's getting full funding from UCLA for economics, but his brain is twice the size of mine and he's got all these crazy legacy ties to the best schools in the states. (actually, he might be american...). but yeah. the point remains. grad school isn't school, it's work. not only do they need to pay you for your work, they need to pay you a livable wage. half-tuition remission or a half-year stipend won't cut it either.</p>
<p>StrangeLight makes an excellent point of the UC being a public school system that completely relies on California's budget. CA's essentially bankrupted so it won't be long before UCs loses funding for graduate students. Any public school is in danger of being in this position but UC/CA is just in a very bad shape. </p>
<p>You need to really think about your personal situation. If you're not ready to jump into academia because your SO's needs and concern for your sister, then don't go to grad school. If you're ready to jump into the academia, then dive in. Your SO will deal- s/he will follow when ready (or not... but that's your life that you're trying to build). Your sister will adjust to whatever school she chooses.</p>
<p>Discussions have been done over and over again- the academia requires too much flexiblity for anyone to be tied down with other long-term commitments because of limited job opportunities.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the other school I'm accepted to is also a public, and I'm not sure about the funding situation there, either. I would have liked to have been accepted to a private school, but haven't been so far, aside from an unfunded MA from a private school with a program which isn't as good as either of the publics to which I've been accepted.</p>
<p>I know issues with debt, SOs, etc. have been discussed to death on this forum, but my situation and my partner's is pretty unique. I don't feel comfortable disclosing more than that, but suffice to say that we are not at all like the prototypical college couple.</p>
<p>I can pay for one year of the UC school, but probably not more. Aside from the personal stuff, it would be really, really hard for me to give up going to this school to work with an adviser who is a superstar in the field. I've heard very positive things about her graduate student advising, and feel like I might have an edge for funding in subsequent years if I am her student. While people on this board generally tend to say that anyone's crazy for going to a humanities PhD program without guaranteed funding, my professors (who are also friends with my prospective UC adviser) will probably think I'm crazy for passing up the opportunity to work with her. I'm not saying that giving up the UC school is completely out of the question, just that it would be very hard. And obviously my profs have their own biases. Coincidentally, both of my advisers went to a (different) highly-ranked UC school, wrangled through the first year and then got funding. My situation, 25 years later, is obviously very different, and I know that. (Though I'm not sure that they do, entirely.)</p>
<p>For now, I'm going to meet people at the other school, meet with my prospective UC adviser again, and try to get more of a sense of the full situation at both places. I know my SO will come with me whatever I decide to do, but I want to make the situation as pain-free as possible for both of us, and that may very well mean going to the UC school. The advice on this forum is valuable, and I'm definitely taking it into consideration. But for me there is more to it than the immediate funding available.</p>
<p>then i think you have your answer. go to the UC school and hope you can get funded after that. yes, people say you shouldn't do a PhD without funding, and you shouldn't, but plenty of people do their MAs without funding and then secure a PhD with support afterward, and this is really no different than that. you need to be fairly certain you can get second year funding, though, otherwise you will start to dig yourself into a dangerous financial hole.</p>
<p>does the UC award its MA after one year or two? my other suggestion would be to consider applying to other grad schools the same year you'd complete the MA portion of the UC program, so in the event that you can't secure funding for the rest of the PhD, you'll have some options to attend other schools. it would act as a bit of a safety net should the UC funding not come through after 1 year.</p>
<p>all the best, and i hope it works out for you!</p>
<p>Don't worry that somebody says that something is crazy. "Crazy" is not an argument. It's your life. Don't let your professors or friends to push you in any direction. Think about your future career. What do you want? What kind of education is good for that? What happens to the students of your future advisor after graduation? Will this PhD help you to get your dream job?
If you feel like it is exactly what you need to be happy later you need to do it and fight for all the possible ways to get money next year. Apply for scholarships, find internship, etc.</p>
<p>Yes, you should do what you think is best for you - i.e. the course of action you'd be most comfortable taking. Don't do something simply because it meshes with your profs' or your friends' expectations or because it meshes with 'conventional wisdom'.</p>