OneiricOcelot

This is some great info, thank you all. One notable thing is that I didn't get the impression that it was actually out of my advisor's power to give us equal stipends. I'm trying to decide about the prudence of sharing more details. I need to sleep on it.

Thanks for the replies! TeaGirl, hearing about your situation especially makes me feel better. I managed to leverage this degree into some pretty sweet PhD admissions, which wasn't even my goal upon entering this program, so I guess it was worth it. The amount of the disparity still irks me, but if you can manage to just attribute your situation to luck and not be upset, I should also! To wabisabi and zapster, there was really no structural difference in the funding (i.e., no fellowship or anything), it was just that our RA's are on different projects.

(I'm actually a GradCafe regular, posting under a new name for super-anonymity.) I'm currently getting an MS in a STEM field, and started under my advisor at the same time as another student. We're nearly perfectly equivalent in terms of our backgrounds, and we both started without any guaranteed funding from the university. We had both discussed with our advisor the fact that we would likely be funded from one of his grants, but he wasn't able to be certain at the time of our applications. Fall term, the other student immediately started receiving a stipend of $x with tuition covered. I, on the other hand, paid for my tuition for nine months, then my stipend of $x/2 (and tuition) began. We're working on different projects, and mine has less funding, so I guess there is some reason for the discrepancy. But I can't get over the fact that, given my paying for tuition, and our timelines for finishing, he'll end up about $40k ahead of me. Has anyone out there had experience with something like this? Would you be super-upset??