Low funding for first year.

[Cashmere]

I've found myself in quite the confusing situation. I recently received an offer of admission from a great public state university but was informed by my POI that I was unlikely to be awarded a fellowship directly by the graduate division. This means that any funding I am awarded has to come directly from the department (departmental fellowships, assistantships, etc), which is understandable as it was the department committee's choice to accept me, but I just now received the official funding letter from the department and was surprised at how underwhelming it was. I received a very light non-resident tuition and health insurance fellowship for my first quarter and have been guaranteed a TA position for my second quarter, but that is it. No additional guaranteed funding for the third quarter or for the rest of my time in grad school.

I've been up and down the list of overall fees and costs of attendance, and there's just no way that any student could make it work without taking on an inordinate amount of student loans. Of course, I am expected to pay out of state tuition until I establish residency, and once that happens fees do drop considerably. But even so, without any sort of guarantee of assistantships or additional fellowships for the coming years, I'm likely to be jumping into grad school with absolutely no safety net. And that just doesn't sit well with me.

Part of me just wants to express my gratitude; the amount that the department is willing to pay me is considerable for a two quarter time period, but in total it adds up to barely 30% of what it would cost me to attend the school for my first year. My POI mentioned once before that he does have some grant money that he would be willing to apply toward an additional stipend, but the amount that I would have to ask him for to cover my cost of attendance would be pretty high, and I'm unsure of whether or not he'd be willing to shell that kind of money out for an incoming, first-year student who likely won't yet be able to take up an RA position.

Obviously my next step is to talk to my POI, but I just wanted to float the question out here for the board.

tl;dr version: Do schools/departments often admit students and award funding packages that they know will not cover the majority of a student's cost to attend? I could understand if this was a terminal MA program, but it's a PhD program. Any thoughts?

Edited March 16, 2011 by Cashmere

[runonsentence]

Sorry to hear about your situation. I've heard of programs offering light funding that is for every year but the first year, but not the other way around.

It sounds like they're trying to dress up an unfunded offer and make it seem slightly better. Personally, I wouldn't take an offer that would leave me in such uncertainty and that would, in all likelihood, mean that I'd have to pay out of pocket for most of the degree.

[Strangefox]

I agree with Runonsentence, it's not a nice offer... So is it your only one or you have other opportinities?

Also, a little question off-topic: What does tl;dr version stand for??

[wtncffts]

Judging from peoples' comments on this forum, it seems this is becoming more and more common. If it's a state university, there have probably been quite significant budget cuts overall.

"tl;dr" stands for "too long; didn't read": basically internet speak for a summary of a long post. I googled it, as I'd never seen it before either.

[chaospaladin]

I've found myself in quite the confusing situation. I recently received an offer of admission from a great public state university but was informed by my POI that I was unlikely to be awarded a fellowship directly by the graduate division. This means that any funding I am awarded has to come directly from the department (departmental fellowships, assistantships, etc), which is understandable as it was the department committee's choice to accept me, but I just now received the official funding letter from the department and was surprised at how underwhelming it was. I received a very light non-resident tuition and health insurance fellowship for my first quarter and have been guaranteed a TA position for my second quarter, but that is it. No additional guaranteed funding for the third quarter or for the rest of my time in grad school.

I've been up and down the list of overall fees and costs of attendance, and there's just no way that any student could make it work without taking on an inordinate amount of student loans. Of course, I am expected to pay out of state tuition until I establish residency, and once that happens fees do drop considerably. But even so, without any sort of guarantee of assistantships or additional fellowships for the coming years, I'm likely to be jumping into grad school with absolutely no safety net. And that just doesn't sit well with me.

Part of me just wants to express my gratitude; the amount that the department is willing to pay me is considerable for a two quarter time period, but in total it adds up to barely 30% of what it would cost me to attend the school for my first year. My POI mentioned once before that he does have some grant money that he would be willing to apply toward an additional stipend, but the amount that I would have to ask him for to cover my cost of attendance would be pretty high, and I'm unsure of whether or not he'd be willing to shell that kind of money out for an incoming, first-year student who likely won't yet be able to take up an RA position.

Obviously my next step is to talk to my POI, but I just wanted to float the question out here for the board.

tl;dr version: Do schools/departments often admit students and award funding packages that they know will not cover the majority of a student's cost to attend? I could understand if this was a terminal MA program, but it's a PhD program. Any thoughts?

What university is this? Also did they say they would give you more funding if you performed well during your 1st year?