If you are looking into how to pay for higher education, chances are you’ve come across lots of information about financial aid available to undergraduates. What you don’t hear about nearly as much, though, is how to pay for graduate school.
Graduate funding breaks down into three main categories: Assistantships, Fellowships and Loans.
Some graduate schools do offer need-based and merit-based scholarships, but these are few and far between. Aid from individual schools usually comes in the form of assistantships and fellowships and there are no Pell grants for graduate students.
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Assistantships represent the most common way for graduate students to receive full or partial funding. Usually, assistantships are confined to tuition waivers, although some schools will include fees and a small stipend. When you have an assistantship, you are usually expected to either help teach or engage in research.
Fellowships are often the results of charitable endowments to universities for specific types of students. For students in the sciences, it is possible to find fellowship programs funded by companies that want research done. IBM recently awarded a Ph.D. fellowship to a student at the University of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Christopher Miller, the recipient, will receive tuition, fees and a stipend. Fellowships often provide more generous support than assistantships. Usually, a fellowship covers nearly all the costs of completing the graduate program. The federal government offers fellowships from the National Science Foundation and through the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program.
There’s evidence that since the recession, assistantships and fellowships have been in short supply. Increasing numbers of students are returning to school for graduate degrees, and competition is fierce. In the Collegian, Robert Kling, an Associate Professor of Economics at Colorado State University, pointed out that the recession has induced thousands more to go to graduate school. “[A]n average student's chances of getting into his or her preferred school or obtaining funding on research or teaching assistantships are lower than normal.”
