Astraneous

Well yeah, but you're not going to spend those 42 hours doing whatever. You'll need to make food and eat it. Let's assume you spend 2 hrs/day doing that. That's 14 hrs/wk. Let's also say that you spend 3 hrs/wk commuting (being conservative here), 3 hrs/wk doing laundry/getting groceries/running errands, 7hrs/wk doing things like bathing, brushing your teeth, and going to the bathroom, and 3 hrs/wk exercising. That's a total of 30 hours. Now you're down to 12 hours of "free time" a week. That's less than 2 hrs/day. This of course isn't taking into consideration the time it takes to transition between tasks, nor the time for all the other minutiae that make up a human life. If you're working 70 hrs/week or more, you're not giving yourself any real downtime, or you're cutting corners on all the other stuff I listed, which is neither healthy nor sustainable (and it's unlikely that all those 70 hrs are actually spent working!).
When are you going to hang out with friends and/or a significant other?
Look, I think philosophy is great, and getting to study it in grad school is awesome, but we're not machines. We need rest and a balanced life. Perpetuating this culture of "you need to work inhuman hours to be good at philosophy" isn't doing anyone any good.

I'd definitely be happy there considering it is my second choice it's just that I was banking on my first choice, i.e. Tufts, declining me. Now that I was accepted to my first choice I'm trying to see how I could possibly make it work out. As you can see through the thread, however, that's probably not going to pan out. Naturally there's some slight disappointment at that, but if I do end up at GSU I wouldn't loathe it by any measure- as is apparent though I would prefer Tufts.

According to my knowledge we are guaranteed at least one TA-ship throughout our four semesters with the usual being two. In special circumstances a third TA-ship can be offered but that's still only around $13k for the four semesters of study. Even with the generous, by Tufts standards, tuition remission I was given I am having a hard time seeing how this could possibly be made to work for lower income students. I would love to attend, but I am having a hard time making these numbers be feasible in anyway shape or form. That is unless I'm totally missing something which I would love to be informed of.