admission already, financial aid far away?

[nahiy]

I'm applying for stat and biostat programs. I've already recieved 2 admissions, but neither mentioned anything about financial aid, although I did remember indicating in the applications that I don't have my own funding sources. Do financial aids usually come on a seperate notice later some time, or does this mean that I probably wouldn't have any?

P.S. I'm an international student. One school did mention that I need to send them financial certificates for the visa documents...

[zhukora]

It will vary from school to school, of course, but most likely you will be notified about financial issues later. Given the current status of the economy, a lot of public schools in particular aren't certain yet how much money they will have going into the next academic year, so while they may have issued funding to the top two or three admits if they know they have the money for that already in the bag, they may be waiting on offering funding to the next highest ranked group until they know where that funding will come from.

There's also the issue of a lot of funding coming from a central pool for the whole university that will be disbursed among the highest-ranked of everybody's admits, so they have to wait until every single department finishes recruiting before they figure out who gets the money and then send out notification.

I'd say you've got anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months before the window for financial aid notifications starts closing. Don't worry yet, schools try really hard to fund their grad students, so give them some time to try to put something together for you.