Penny_Power

Maybe I'm wrong in the aggregate, but what I have been told by a large number of friends and acquaintances is that housing costs near central Austin are very high. This was confirmed by me just trying to look for a place near campus on apartments.com. Other people who live in the city are able to dodge these costs by avoiding central Austin, working remote, or in Georgetown/Round Rock, but if you try to dodge these costs by living far out as a grad student then you are eating other costs in transportation, parking, etc. One thing that is important to keep in mind about Austin as a city is that there is no effective public transit infrastructure. The buses are unreliable, there is no subway or similar system, and the highway system in Austin is a complete mess. I say all of this only to communicate how important it is to have money in the city. Maybe it is possible to make it work in Austin on 20k, but it is certainly not comfortable. My sense from the initial impression was that Austin was being lumped together with other small towns in Texas or rural areas as if the costs of living are similar. I know of programs which are much lower ranked than UT Austin and in much, much cheaper cities that have a higher stipend. Graduate students at UT have been trying to organize for some time because their situation is not livable.

Hello. I am a lifetime Austinite, and I'd like to let you know: Austin does not have low cost of living. The rent for apartments in or around UT is very high, as Austin has been "the new Silicon valley" for quite awhile. Even the surrounding areas of Austin are expensive because of its sprawling suburbs. Austin is much more similar to east coast cities like Boston or NYC than it is to say Plano or El Paso. It is expensive, and 20k/yr in Austin is not particularly livable. It is also important to recognize: Not only is UT-Austin's stipend low, it is infamously low. I would recommend strong caution against taking promises of higher funding in the future at their word. Sorry if this is bad news, I'd just like to prevent the spread of misinformation based on enthusiasm. Graduate programs in general are exploitative, but I have heard first hand accounts of how UT-Austin's program is particularly bad. They rely on this sort of misinformation to mislead students.

I received an eMail about interviews about an hour ago. No idea if they're still going, but I had also discounted myself after the stray posting last night.