cashmonger

Check out IRS Publication 970 at this link: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch01.html It covers more than you ever wanted to know about fellowships. The short version is that amounts for tuition and fees (like your fee waiver) are not taxable, but the amounts you use to live on (like your stipend) are. As for figuring out how much you'll likely lose do this: Add up your stipend and any other income for the year. Subtract $8000 for the standard deduction. The first 7300 of what's left will be taxed at 10% Anything above 7300 will be taxed at 15% So, with 18,000, you'd pay about 1140 in federal taxes. Of course, if you live in a state with income taxes you'll have that on top of it and if you live in NY you'll have city tax too. Finally, grad students generally do not have to pay FICA (Social Security and Medicaid tax), but you should check with your university. It you do have to pay it, it's a little over 7% before the deductions -- so hope you don't. I hope that helps. Oh - and if you scroll down to the bottom of that publication, is says: "Tuition reductions for graduate education are considered “qualified

Unfortunately, Stony Brook is rather expensive for a place that isn't in or even that near a city. There are few apartment complexes, so most of the off campus housing is in shared houses or else apartments that people have carved out of their basements/garages. Shared rent can be reasonable (in the 500-700 range), but getting your own place is quite difficult (unless you want to pay 1000 a month for a basement with a hot plate and a microwave). As for the town itself, Stony Brook is a small village surrounded by pretty bland suburbs. You could consider living in Port Jefferson though, which is a nice little town nearby. The train to New York takes over 1 and a half hours from Stony Brook station, but only an hour from Ronkonkoma, which you might end up living closer to anyway. You absolutely will need a car. There is some on campus grad housing, but I think single students have to share rooms, so you could definitely do better off campus. On the plus side, SBU has an incredibly diverse student population, with students from all over the world. Going in to New York for the day is easy, though I agree that if you needed to be there every day for some reason, you would quickly wear yourself out commuting.