Current grad school stipends

[Undergrad Adviser]

I'm advising some undergraduate students on their grad school applications, and I'm anticipating a few will get multiple offers. It's been a while since I was in that position, and I'm wondering what the range of stipend support is these days.

Care to share the name of your current (or recent) institution and the base level of support? Bonus points if you can also provide information about (1) cost of university-subsidized housing, (2) whether all students are provided full support or not, and (3) any expected but uncompensated TA or RA obligations that are part of the deal.

[.edu]

not to be snarky, but isnt this informstion available on university's webpages? i went to a top five program and all of your requested info (except question 3, answer below) can be found on either the department or university webpage.

re: 3, no for TA. i was a TA mainly and the only financially uncompensated work i did was electing to attend univ sponsered professional development workshops on teaching. The only unstated thing about TAing I can think of is that, depending on the size of your class, around busy times like midterms/finals one does sometimes end up working more than the supposed only 13-20 hrs per week.

maybe for RA. i never did or felt unstated expectation to do uncompensated RA work, i just worked on my own research and one summer had paid RAship, but i admittedly didnt ask colleagues if they were being paid or not. I naïvely assumed everyone in any grad program was getting paid for their work until really recently hearing otherwise actually. it makes sense though because some sub fields have more paid RA opportunities than others, so i can see how students not in those fields might do uncompensated work for the experience. i really dont think there is an *expectation* of this though in my program, but i suppose its possible and i just never felt it/ realized it? at any rate, i graduated just fine without ever doing uncompensated RA work, so even if there is an expectation i dont know about breaking it apparently doesn't hinder progress through the program.

best wishes to your student!

[my experiences]

I joined a PhD program back in the mid-2000s without an M.A. at a Big 10 school. At that time, the terms of the contract were 5 years fully funded with the possibility of extensions in the future. I sought opportunities in other departments for a semester here, a semester there to extend the contract well into dissertation writing years. I lived in a college town - more pricy than area towns, but the stipend was almost adequate in the basic necessities - rent, food, utilities. My institution offered almost full tuition coverage for grad students on a TA/RA position.

There were very few opportunities for grad student-specific housing. This was the hardest part, because it is a college town the rental prices were higher than anticipated but still manageable.

I think that in the contract there was a line that said something about not making adequate progress in the degree program might translate to TA/RA possibilities getting yanked. RA positions became increasingly more difficult to get as money dried up and the institution accepted more and more undergrads which translated to more grads "needing" to teach courses. By the end of my time, just a few years ago, no one had RA positions unless their mentor had an NSF or other such grant, or the student had obtained one. Yet those are the same necessary vehicles through which grads are mentored in writing for publication, and getting onto faculty mentors' projects, and paid for it.

So no unexpected lack of compensation - but working with a faculty member for publications increasingly became something that happened on the side rather than built into the structure of the program itself.

Good luck to your student!