madamezubidar

Cost of living is an essential consideration - e.g. in comparing Hanover, NH to Cambridge, MA, (about 2 hours apart), the standard Dartmouth College and MIT stipends have a difference in the 1K-2K range, but you can live very comfortably in Hanover on the Dartmouth stipend while the MIT stipend is at the "living wage" level for the Boston area and you'd be living very frugally. The best way to guage this difference is to talk to current students about living on the stipend. Good questions to ask are how much they pay in rent, how many roommates they have, how often they are able to go out to dinner or do other activities that cost more than a couple bucks (e.g. going to concerts or to see a play), and generally whether they find living on the stipend to be a strain.