mathmonk

Hi, I live in an Asian country where the graduate students are not allowed to teach until they get the job of a lecturer/professor, i.e. only after Ph.D. one has any chance of teaching a class. This is because not many people opt for higher education in my country, so there aren't many classes to teach. However, in the USA it is mandatory for graduates to teach undergraduates to be able to fund their graduate studies and this is called TAship. While going through various maths graduate program webpages, I have found the following statements regarding TAships: TA appointments are limited to 15 to 20 hours per week, averaging no more than 15 hours per week. Typically, TAship has been a 50% appointment (20 hrs/week), which involves teaching recitation sections or lectures, participating in course duties. A 1/4-time teaching assistantship (TA) requires about 2 classroom hours per week of teaching. I am unable to understand the terms like "20 hrs per week", "50% appointment", and "1/4-time TA". In particular, I have the following doubts: Who counts how many hours a week I am working? How does the department ensure that I work exactly 20 hrs per week? 50% of what equates to 20 hrs per week? 1/4th of what is 2 hrs per week? I believe that these questions will sound naive to you all who have been working to fund their education, but until now I was able to receive financial support in the form of government scholarships and parent's savings. Since I am thinking of applying to the USA for Ph.D. and couldn't find anyone who could answer these queries, I decided to post them here. Thank you very much for your time.

After writing two emails and waiting for one week I got a one-line reply stating that funding decisions will be taken in March. There is no mention of the deadline (when in March?) or the monetary value (how much will they pay?) of the funding possibilities. What is the point of sending admission letters so early when they themselves have no idea about providing funding? Obviously, people won't pay for the whole Ph.D. from their pocket. Since there is no deadline for me to submit proof of funds or accept/reject admission offer, what is the point of sending early admission letters? I will be grateful if someone can explain the intention behind such admission techniques (not reading everybody's application before sending the admission letter, and not including information about funding in the admission letter).

Yes, I didn't expect such delay in reply from a top 100 national ranking university. I believe that Graduate Schools hire staff to take care of emails. Since there is 11hrs time-zone difference, I would like to avoid calling (also it will be very costly!). If I don't get a reply today, will send a reminder tomorrow. If I can't get any reply by next week, then I will have to call.

I sent an email a couple of days ago. Haven't got any reply yet. I was wondering whether the funding decision will be affected by the ongoing Government Shutdown (there are various news reports stating the "Delays in research grant funding could also mean some faculty members hesitate to take on new graduate students.").

Yes, I will contact them soon. The way I came to know about my admission letter was as follows: I received a system generated email from their graduate school stating that the admission status has been updated in the application portal, then in the application portal I found my admission letter which wasn't signed by any specific person. In the letter, I am asked to submit the proof of funds either directly to graduate school or upload it in the portal. This confused me even more since nobody from the university has directly contacted me so far. Moreover, the admission for the specific program I applied was not supposed to be on a rolling basis, it even has two separate deadlines depending on whether or not you are interested in receiving funding. Even though I applied before the funding deadline, there is no mention of funding in the letter, and the letter is signed by "The Graduate School, XYZ University".

How is this possible? Moreover, the admission letter asks me to submit a form to certify funds in the amount of $41,100 for visa purpose, without mentioning anything about the funding possibilities. Initially, I was very happy to receive an admission letter from one of my top choices, but now I think without funding it's same as rejection.