Grad school funding questions

[elpollodiablo]

Hey kids,

I'm mulling this first offer I received, and while it's very generous for a master's program, it means I'm going back to living like a straight pauper. Which is fine! But I'm curious to hear about others' experiences in evaluating offers and coming to an eventual decision. What did it for you, ultimately? What's a decent offer for a master's program in the humanities? How much flex do I have in requesting additional funding, health insurance discounts, etc? Any? None?

,

epd

[hannah]

Rare are the master's programs that are funded, so you're off to a good start!

Speaking from my own experience, 'cuz that's all I got: I was lucky to get into a funded master's program -- tuition remission, a TA stipend that was mostly enough to live on, and (the best part) really excellent health coverage. All of those things are thanks to the strong graduate-student union here. Does your university recognize its union?

In addition, it is a top master's program in my field -- and one of the few funded ones -- so I knew I'd be in a good position to apply to PhD programs, were that where I wanted to end up, and in any case I knew that I'd be learning a lot and teaching a lot and in general that I'd be in a far better situation than the one I was in at the time (e.g., unemployed, uninsured, etc.). 

I don't know what your funding package is, but I'd guess I'd say to wait until you hear back from all your schools. You might be able to use different funding packages as leverage. And when you go visit, say to them, "I am leaving my 12-figure job in resplendent NYC [or whatever] to come here. Why would I do such a thing? Tell me what you can do for me. Can you get me into a PhD program, if I decided to pursue further graduate study? Can you give me health insurance?"

[elpollodiablo]

Thanks hh! The health insurance thing is a non-starter; I already asked about it. It was definitely one of the first things that came to mind in terms of expense, because it's usually mandatory. I saved hell of ducats at OU by gaming them with insurance waivers (basically I'd tell the bursar that I wanted to waive the insurance and I'd get back to them with my policy number and then never did--I did this every quarter for three years). I'm told the Miami insurance is pretty reasonably priced, but I'd still be paying for it out of the stipend, which is not in itself a whole hell of a lot of money.

I don't know about the union there, though I'd love to find out somehow.

[auto-da-fey]

Rare are the master's programs that are funded, so you're off to a good start!

Yeah, definitely. And hannah's right that your best bet is competing offers, but even then I'm not sure I'd count on much. The upshot, though, is that unlike a job offer where they might retract it if you annoy them with requests (at least in my world; not sure if that's how it works in corporate), you're not risking much here to negotiate as best you can, because they're not gonna retract the offer.

I don't know about the union there, though I'd love to find out somehow.

Graduate-employee unions are fucking great--we went on strike one year during finals week, and the administration pulled some old-school Pinkerton-style individualized scare-tactics that completely failed (they wanted to kill our insurance, and we kept it). That said, I wouldn't count on much at Miami--

from the Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions (which admittedly does not appear to have been updated in two years):

States in which university employees are eligible, but in which graduate employees and part-time faculty are explicitly excluded:
Ohio

Don't know the backstory to that, but fuck someone.

I have a friend in the history department at Miami, I'd be happy to ask for any inside info if you want.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah whit that'd be fantastic! Thanks!

Also that is certainly assy about the union. Stupid OH.

[davy]

Rare are the master's programs that are funded, so you're off to a good start!

Seriously, I'm obviously not the guy to be giving advice here.

However, I have been taking full advantage of the Georgia Dept. of Labor "Retraining" program, and I've received enough unemployment to erase the academic cost (tuition and books, etc) of grad school.

Of course, you'd need to get laid off sometime before school starts.

[jess]

Are there any fellowships you can apply for in addition to your stipend? Without my fellowship, my stipend is pretty meh, and with it, it's still nothing comfy, but the extra money makes it not bad given the low cost of living here. My school has a list of available fellowships on the university site somewhere, probably accessible through the graduate school webpage, although I was entered automatically for mine by my department who has to write the application/recommendation. Worth looking into though to see if you can pad things at all, since as I said before, it was a combo of GPA and GRE that got me mine, and your GRE scores were high. I know on our list, there are a bunch that apply only to people from the state, so you might qualify for some additional ones given that you come from OH. We also have a whole bunch of other random ones on the list, so who knows what your school might have.

And yeah, my experience with negotiations is that these things aren't particularly negotiable, and I'd think all the more so in a masters program. You have to figure that while they like you the most, they have waitlists of other people they like a lot too and who would gladly take any offer at this point, and it's not going to make or break their lives which of you they end up with, whereas it's going to make things probably a lot more complicated if students start comparing notes and find out that they're getting shafted on their stipends relative to someone else. I know in my program, this stuff ends up as fairly shared knowledge fast enough. But yeah, I would try, since it can't hurt.

Rare are the master's programs that are funded, so you're off to a good start!

Seriously, I'm obviously not the guy to be giving advice here.

However, I have been taking full advantage of the Georgia Dept. of Labor "Retraining" program, and I've received enough unemployment to erase the academic cost (tuition and books, etc) of grad school.

Of course, you'd need to get laid off sometime before school starts.

I would considered "funded" though to mean remission + stipend, whereas that sounds like more the equivalent of remission (plus a little extra), which also may be rare. If you're getting a stipend, I assume you would no longer count as unemployed, since presumably you are doing something (TA, RA, GA, etc) to earn it. I have a 20 hr/week TA currently for instance which is why I get paid mine. Still, that's a pretty nice way to fund your education when that's not an option!

[elpollodiablo]

jess thanks for the advice, I'll definitely be looking into fellowships and additional scholarships, etc. They already offered me a $2K scholarship and another $1K for relocation costs, but I've no way of knowing if that's relatively standard or not. With those figured in the stipend is about equal to what I used to make working 40hrs/wk at a hotel while doing my undergrad so I should probably just shut the fuck up, stop worrying, and bask in my good fortune.

[jess]

Dude, in that case, it sounds like you're getting a really sweet deal for funding especially given it's a masters program and in the humanities which I don't think hands out money quite as freely as say, the hard sciences. I think your perspective might be skewed from NYC (rents and the amount of spending that city otherwise inspires), but you should be fine, especially given that you'll be in a two income household presumably. If you want a more concrete perspective, for clinical psych doctoral programs that are in comparable locations (midwest, college town or small city), stipends tend to be from $14-17k. Programs in bigger, more expensive cities pay more, but generally not in proportion to the increases in costs of living usually (the school I applied to in DC had stipends of $20k, and I think that's probably close to what it is in Boston), unless you're talking about certain private universities with ample endowments, and even then it's nothing great. If you want to be making a good amount of money, don't go to grad school!

[elpollodiablo]

I'm a man with a one track mind.

So much to do in one lifetime!

[auto-da-fey]

"Alas, I do not know much of anything about graduate student affairs" says my friend who teaches at Miami. She said she'd ask around for dirt if you had any other specific questions though.

One thing I learned, which I hadn't quite realized, is the actual location of Miami University. For some reason I always associated it with Dayton, but she mentioned living in Cincinnati, which surprised me; mapped it, and now that makes sense. Now I feel like a tool for not having applied for a job there a few years ago, because I quite like Cincinnati. Oh well, wouldn't have gotten it anyway and I can't complain about how things have turned out.

[auto-da-fey]

off-topic: I know an academic couple who maintained a long-distance marriage between Cincinnati and upstate NY for 17 years. I can't fathom that; really, it would be kind of ideal for me in a lot of ways, but I doubt most people see it that way, and I know they didn't, in which case, I also can't then fathom putting career first at the expense of personal happiness that long.

anyway.

[elpollodiablo]

Well, it's only 10 miles further to Dayton than it is to Cincy. D expects having to commute to one or the other for work.

[auto-da-fey]

ah, okay--on Google Maps the roads just look like a straighter shot into Cincy.

[jess]

Anything in particular you (either of you) recommend in Cincy? I'm thinking of driving up there one of these days to hit some stores they don't have here and to bring back as many things from Trader Joe's (they don't have any stores in KY) as I can fit in my car, but I don't know much about the city nor have any other ideas yet about what else to do there.

[auto-da-fey]

Is Northside the hip neighborhood not too far from the University of Cincinnati? I think that's where I found a few good Thai restaurants, but I can't remember the specifics, unfortunately. I don't really know the city so well, I just liked its general feel when I spent a week living out of my rented minivan there in 2004. I really like the UC campus--place is the least flat college this side of UCLA, but I enjoyed its rolling hills, and the downtown public library was my other home there. Unless you're looking for rare Cincinnati newspapers on microfilm, though, I'm not sure that's what you have in mind, so I defer to pollo or others on this.

I did try really hard to convince my friend to rent this apartment across the river in Covington one summer when we were in college (we drove all the way to Cincy to see Slash's Snakepit, and the fucker OD'd that night and canceled  ), but he was not having it. I still kind of rue his wimpiness, that might have been a neat experience.

[elpollodiablo]

I don't know much from Cincy; I was always a mid-state and NoOh boy. But the Southgate House in Covington is a fantastic venue, and I look forward to seeing more shows there while at school up the road.

Really I wish NYU would just come with the rejection and OSU would do whatever the fuck they're gonna do so I can get the ball rolling. I know through back channels that NYU has already notified its candidates, while OSU has started doing the same in the last few days. C'mon, fuckers!

[auto-da-fey]

is there a grad-school admissions applicant-info-sharing website? if not, there should be; the Academic Jobs Wiki is one of the best things out there IMO, a really beautiful collective effort to take some agency and power (at least in regard to disseminating information) back from the notoriously secretive, unresponsive, and even clandestine world of search committees. I would think potential grad students would find a similar project valuable.

[elpollodiablo]

The Grad Cafe (http://www.thegradcafe.com/) has been really fantastic, especially the forums and especially through the application process. The results search page has been my source for finding out when people have been getting application decisions.

[jess]

Perhaps if you end up at Miami then, we will have to meet up for a show sometime. I was originally hoping to hit up some shows in Cincy this year, before I appreciated exactly how much grad school would eat my life. After this year, I won't be taking nearly as many classes though (more research and clinical work), so I'm hoping that will make it more feasible occasionally, along with shows in Louisville and maybe even Nashville from time to time.

Also, re: grad school websites, there are some for specific fields, like studentdoctor/psychcentral forums for med school and clinical psych programs. I know that was much more helpful for me than grad cafe generally, although grad cafe was somewhat useful for very general info (like what is the area around a certain campus like). On SDN though, there's a ton of info re: applying that can be very helpful and specific, and updated lists for interview dates, then offers and rejections and waitlists. On the other hand, it's amazing the amount of personal info some applicants stupidly disclose there, both in terms of identifying details and things that make them sound bad, like saying they aren't that interested in some of the programs they are applying to, or suggesting they are going to lie about how much they are interested in doing research, etc. Current grad students and even some profs do read those boards, and in many programs, grad students are asked for their opinions before decisions are made.

[elpollodiablo]

Fuck you, too, OSU!

That was disappointing. Even though I doubt they would've offered me as much. Ah, well. Closure, at least!

[jess]

Does that mean you are officially going to Miami?

[elpollodiablo]

Yep!

[hannah]

Yo, pollo, 'grats on the decision! I'm sorry about OSU, but I'm sure you'll have a blast at Miami! This is probably cold comfort, but I read this on gradcafe:

OSU no longer has an MA program, as such. Beginning this year, all admitted students enter into a direct PhD-track program. Yes, the website still calls it an MA program in the sense that students must first complete an MA prior to beginning the PhD, but I was told that some students' statements of purpose made it clear that they wanted to complete an MA without advancing to the PhD. Such students, naturally, were not admitted.

In any case, those external applicants coming from an undergraduate program (and, thus, into the MA portion of the PhD track) are in the same boat, notification-wise, as the rest of the external non-fellowship applicants. At least as of the other day, not all students had been notified.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah, I thought that was fucking strange. I wasn't really ready to jump into a PhD with both feet, anyhow.

Plus OSU students are the worst.