If you do not get a Graduate Assistantship or Fellowship, can you finance your education?

[Huckabees]

Hi there,

I'm applying to Masters programs and I've come across this question on one of my applications. Not sure how to answer it. I was wondering:

- Would ticking 'yes' reduce my chances of funding?

- Would ticking 'no' mean that if they can't offer me funding they won't offer me a place at all? (Thereby not giving me a choice as to whether I can attend or not.)

As for the honest answer to the question: I probably would be able to, but it would mean a loan of some sort. It's my top school, and barring a great offer from a school lower on my list, I would want to do what I could to make it work there. I was lucky to get out of undergrad debt-free thanks to scholarships, so while I'm still looking for every which way to reduce costs, I do feel like I have a little bit more lee-way with regards to grad school.

I'm a longtime lurker here, so I've heard plenty of sound advice about GAs and other funding being scarce for Masters students, especially a professional program, which this is. (It's a pretty obscure one though, not an MBA or the like.) And I know that there are some general, albeit incredibly competitive GAs available at the university. But I'll be coming from Australia and, well, I'd rather not leave the country without funding, given work restrictions on visas etc.

Anyway, would appreciate your thoughts!

[Sigaba]

I was asked a similar question when I applied to my top choice. I answered "no." The school declined the opportunity to admit me. I'm sure that there was absolutely no connection whatsoever to my answer and the school's decision. (And I'm not the least bit bitter about it.)

IMO, you should answer all questions on an application honestly, especially if there's a box for you to sign where you indicate that all of your answers are true and correct. But even if there isn't, full disclosure is a good thing. The last thing you'd want as a grad student would be the weight of your department falling on you.

My $0.02.

Edited September 15, 2011 by Sigaba

[Huckabees]

Thanks for your response. That's an interesting point on full disclosure, even if I don't think there's really any dishonesty involved with either answer. I didn't realize I'd framed it as such myself, but I shouldn't have. Because 1.) I think I've understated my need for funding, and chances are disturbingly good that I 'honestly' couldn't finance it myself when push came to shove. And 2.), more generally, I don't think this question has much to do with honesty in the first place. Seems to me it's strategy play for both the university and the applicant, especially for 'cash cow' Masters. Now that might be undue cynicism, or it might not

For anyone else who needs help on this question, I also found this after I posted:

But I would still love to hear others' experience with questions like this and what the most... strategic? answer would be. It looks like it's not an overly common question.

[fuzzylogician]

What would happen if you got accepted with no funding: would you go? do you believe that the degree you will earn and your potential post-degree salary will be worth the debt you will incur? Other people's answers to the 'can you self-fund' question should be placed in this context. My answers to these questions were 'NO' - there was no way I'd attend a school that did not offer me sufficient funding, and although getting rejected is obviously more demoralizing than declining an acceptance, the end result would have been the same so I chose to say that I could not fund myself.

ETA: I should add that for my programs, at least, I seriously doubt that self-funding ability had any influence on acceptance decisions.

Edited September 20, 2011 by fuzzylogician

[ktel]

Funding played a pretty significant role in my decision making process, making it very easy for me to decline one of the two schools that had a worse reputation and offered roughly 1/3 the funding of the school I am attending now.

[Huckabees]

Cheers guys, this helps a lot. Especially fuzzylogician's note on post-degree salaries, as mine is not a particularly lucrative field either. Also, since I'm international I'm not eligible for federal loans.

Looks like I'll be ticking 'no' too.