[PsiXPsi]

If anyone wouldn't mind posting, I had a couple of questions regarding how your graduate institution (past or present) handled graduate students.  I'm currently in my second year, and the setup was finally starting to nag at me, so I wanted to get a consensus among the other grads.

For us (i will keep the university nameless for now), seven credit hours at the out-of-state and in-state rates are covered each Fall and Spring Semester; if any student takes more than seven, we are left to cover the rest at the in-state rate ($167.50 per hour).  However, with each semester, there are fees based on the number of credit hours taken that the grad students must pay (generally seven hours are taken, so each Fall and Spring semester there are approximately $725 that we must pay).  For the summer semester, generally six credit hours are taken (three waved) but the other three are set at in-state rate, and with the fees, we generally pay $1125 or so for summer.

So in a year, the grad students for chemistry are paid around $16,500 (after taxes) and must pay (for tuition and fees) nearly $2,600.  

My question is whether or not this is the same for everyone else (in terms of having to pay fees and tuition, the stipend received, etc)??

[Dan]

I'm in the UK. I was funded by industry, with a stipend that matched the EPSRC [Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council] rate. My stipend was ~£13000 per year (~$20000), and all fees were completely covered. I didn't have to pay any tax on it at all. Most people I know were on the EPSRC rate, it's the standard throughout the UK as far as I know (the rate is now ~£13500). Big Pharma sometimes used to give higher rate scholarships (though probably not these days).

To get an idea of cost of living, rent+bills came in at about £500 ($800) per month, and a pint of ale was about £3 ($5). We have a national health service, so healthcare (including optics and dentistry) is basically free for anyone in full time education.

[enahs]

Feel free to post your school. It is not privileged information.


Honestly, that does not sound like a great deal to me. But it depends on where you live and the cost of living.

I got 28K from Purdue, everything paid for (including insurance). A 1000 sqft 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment + utilities ran me $700 a month too.
I was on a special fellowship though, most students got up to 23K a year.

The cost of living at Purdue is nothing. As a rough estimate, ~1/3rd of the graduate students would completely own houses out right (no loan or mortgage) by the time they would leave! There were many people easily supporting a 3-4 person family just off the stipend.


I will note though, depending on how you are paid (fellowship, scholarship, classified as employee, etc) there are quite a few states where the schools (public) are not legally allowed to pay certain fees and such; so it might not all be the school. It was that way where I did my MS. My adviser would pay the fees out of a grant; but he was constantly getting in trouble for it and having to fight to do it; because even that was frowned upon by the state.

[stewie griffin]

At my school we got something like $22,000/yr stipend before taxes, plus basic health insurance (no dental or vision). However, you had to pay about $2000/yr in student fees which allowed you to use the local bus system (you didn't have to pay everytime you got on the bus), the gym, the hospital, legal services, etc regardless of whether or not you ever used any of those. But with the cost of living, it was quite manageable.

[tamim83]

My school pays $23,000 per year for a stipend, it may be more or less depending on where your stipend comes from (fellowships pay more, straight research assistantships can pay less).  Full time tuition (9 or more credits for a grad student) and fees are covered with a scholarship and health insurance.  We do get dental and vision, but you have to pay for these yourselves, ~$25 a month.