Interpreting funding offer (Canada)

[Cup of Tea]

I am an international student accepted to a PhD-1 track (skipping the MA) in Sociology at McGill and have recently received their funding offer. Since I find their system rather complicated (especially after looking at really straighforward offers from american universities), I would like to double check I understand what they are saying and would appreciate your insights.

After consulting the University's website, I came up with the following estimate of annual costs (minus food, books, personal expenses):

• Tuition: 13,075.50
  
• Student Society Fees: 184.60
  
• Student Services and Athletics: 497.00
  
• Registration, Transcripts, Administrative: 280.80
  
• Copyright Fee: 24.90
  
• Information Technology Charge: 210.30
  
• PGSS Dental Insurance: 171.68
  
• International Health Insurance: 651.00
  
• Housing: 6,000.00
  
• Phone and Internet: 500.00
  

TOTAL: 21,595.78

My funding letter states:

In recognition of your very strong application we can, at present, offer you a five-year funding package amounting to a total of about $146,000. The package will consist of a combination of graduate awards and teaching and/or research assistantships and includes $15,000 during the first four years to cover your tuition fees. In your first year you will receive a total of $40,000. If you do not receive any major external funding after your first year you will receive a minimum of $29,000 per year for the next 3 years (when you will still pay full tuition fees), and $18,000 in your fifth year, conditional on your satisfactory standing in the program. If you do receive a major external fellowship, however, this offer is replaced by a recruitment fellowship of $7,500 for your first year and a $5.000 teaching or research assistantship in subsequent years.

And after I followed up with some questions, I received this:

You should look at PhD fees only. At $15,000 per year they’re actually a little lower than the MA fees. You’ll have to pay this amount annually for 4 years (the so-called ‘residency’ period). After that, your fees drop to about $4000 per year. The funding is intended to cover your living expenses for the entire year but many students take on some part-time RA (research assistant) work during the summer (that is, from early April to the end of August) to make some extra money. But, in any case, I am quite confident that you’ll be able to get one of the special fellowships for international students (see http://www.mcgill.ca...ts/fellowships/) in which case you should be doing quite well. Actually, I have to admit that I didn’t check the actual amounts of these scholarships again and realize now that I will have to amend my offer to you to make sure you get at least $5000 more than offered in the letter each year if you get a scholarship (if you look at the PBEE, for instance, it’s only $25,000 so adding $7,500 to that in the first year would only give you $32,500 instead of the $40,000 I offered; instead you should be getting more).

So this is where I got a bit confused and am now unsure at exactly which amounts I am looking at for each year.

For year 1, I suppose this means $40,000-$22,000, which leaves me with $18,000 for all the expenses I did not cover in the table above (ie. food, books etc.). For years 2, 3 and 4, I am not sure whether the $29,000 per year in case I do not get a major external award already includes the aforementioned $15,000 for tuition or not. Due to the follow-up e-mail, I am also not sure what the fellowship amount is supposed to be in case I do get one.

I get really anxious around all this financial stuff because it is so important; I would like to know whether this is an offer that would enable me to live normally (I am not an extravagant person at all so that is not a problem) but cannot evaluate it until I am sure I am even looking at the right numbers. Not to mention I was reading threads on taxes before receiving this and am now wondering where that comes into play..

I hope this made sense. I will probably realize I wrote a bunch of nonsense the moment I wake up, but right now, if anyone managed to get through all this and can help, I would appreciate it very much.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Cup of Tea

[electrochoc]

So I'll try to address a few of your questions.

The external award: The majority of Canadian universities reduce their internal offer of funding if you get external funding from the government (SSHRC, OGS, Vanier, etc).

Tuition: A normal offer from a Canadian University explicitly states what they will be paying you, no tuition or no other costs deducted yet. So If they give you 40,000, it's 40,000 minus tuition and indicental costs (which you can have HR take off their paycheck every month). Whatever is left over is yours to spend on housing, books, etc. I know in the US sometimes the offer means you don't pay tuition, but you do pay tuition here and your funding is usually higher to allocate for that (especially as an international student - they're trying to make sure your take home pay is comparable to a domestic student's).

First year funding is usually higher than the other years (mostly because of the heavy course load and moving costs). After that that's what you get" a minimum offer. You could end up getting more if they run into more money, but the minimum offer works at a guarantee and helps you to budget accordingly.

The special fellowship for intl students could be of any value. You never know with these endowment awards, so you can just hope you luck out. But even without them the offer you got now is quite reasonable for an intl student. I know it might get tougher after the first year, but at least you can start budgeting now and plan for part-time jobs. (it is quite possible to get an extra RA position from your supervisor if they're doing some SSHRC funded project).

Montreal is a big city so it's expensive, but nowhere close to Toronto or Vancouver expensive. I'd just advise you not too feel very rich with the 40k the first year and save the most you can for rainy days.

Hope this helps.

Edited February 26, 2012 by sabb

[ktel]

I would recommend that you look at budgeting for the entire 5 years, and not on a year-by-year basis. My funding also comes in weird chunks, and I get significantly more money in my first year, so I made a budget for my entire degree (a 2 year MASc) based on the minimum amount of funding I am guaranteed. For you, you are guaranteed at least $146,000 over 5 years. According to the letter you received you should be paying $64,000 of tuition out of your funding. That leaves you with $82,000 left, or $16,400 per year. Should be more than doable to pay for housing, food, books, etc. I'm currently living in Toronto and live very comfortably off of just less than $1500 a month.

[Cup of Tea]

Thank you both for your quick and informative responses! I have also contacted the department just to make sure I understood them correctly. Figuring out things will not work out financially three years into the program is the last thing I want to do...

Ktel, your logic makes a lot of sense, and as Sabb states, I really should save some of that $40,000 chunk from the first year.

I do have one more question, though. Do students in Canada usually stay on campus during the summer and do research/work on their thesis? From what I understand, summer session tuition is charged separately, so if I have to work on my thesis, would this mean I would have to pay in addition to the usual tuition charges?

Edited February 26, 2012 by Cup of Tea

[ktel]

I do have one more question, though. Do students in Canada usually stay on campus during the summer and do research/work on their thesis? From what I understand, summer session tuition is charged separately, so if I have to work on my thesis, would this mean I would have to pay in addition to the usual tuition charges?

I am expected to work on my thesis over the summer. While undergrads are usually charged separate tuition for the summer session, it is included in our graduate tuition (whether you want to stay for the summer or not). You should ask McGill about this.

[TakeruK]

In the sciences especially, the summer is seen as the time to really work on your thesis and research because you won't have courses or TA duties to attend to. Most students I talk to say they don't really begin their research until their first summer, and every fall/winter that they have classes, research tends to take a back seat.

Most Canadian schools expect their students to pay fees for every semester until the final thesis has been submitted, and the only way to not pay fees is to formally withdraw from your program and then re-enrol later. This would only be recommended if you have to suspend your studies for a year or something for some reason!

It is good that your fees at McGill get reduced after awhile, at my current school, we have to pay full fees even if we've finished all our courses and only using a minimum amount of resources with our research. Usually when a school quotes you tuition cost and fees, it is for the whole 12 month period, Sept to Sept., or per semester/term (so just multiply by 3).

Also, sometimes you can switch to "part time status" and pay some fraction of the fees. Some students who run out of funding years and end up moving home to write their thesis may do this.

Finally, almost all fellowships will require you to attend full time (and thus pay full fees) for the duration of the award/fellowship.

[electrochoc]

The summer tuition is separate at some universities. I had to register for summer to get the summer chunk of SSHRC and OGS so I ended up paying an extra 2500 basically for the summer. It is really depends on the programme, I know people that don't register for the summer and get a job somewhere else to make some money. But since you're on a phd track programme, that might not be possible.

Once you're ABD and register for the thesis then you might have to register for the summer like TakeruK said, because they'll require you to have a continuous registration until defense.

[chibuku]

Looks like tuition for int students is $13k annually (+ $2k in fees and insurance) http://www.mcgill.ca...s/graduate-fees

I was accepted to the same program and as a Canadian I`ll get $22k in year one and $16k after so it looks like a similar deal. Montreal has the cheapest rent of any city I've ever lived in, so you can stretch the money relatively far i'd think

Phd-1 track includes the MA though, which explains why your offer includes year 5 rather than the 4 year program for phd-2.

Are you thinking about accepting? PM me if you want to chat about research interests, Montreal, etc.

Edited February 28, 2012 by chibuku

[Cup of Tea]

Thanks guys; now if only someone could wave their magic wand and make a decision instead of me...

Chibuku, you have a PM

[DustSNK]

Has anyone heard about tuition wavers? I have seen some talks of it on the forums before.

[Tortefeasor]

I'm a doctoral student at McGill (Faculty of Law), so hopefully can help clarify some things here.

First off, unless your program is odd, you won't have to pay tuition for the summer term. Technically you won't be enrolled over summer, but you'll continue to receive all the benefits of being a student (library privileges, etc.). The main impact this will have on you is that a lot of the major university awards are set up so that they have to paid out while you are enrolled in classes, so your $25k for the first year (after tuition) will be paid out over eight months (September to April), and you'll have to save up or make alternative arrangements for the summer. While you'll probably want to research/write over the summer, it's my understanding that the funding-based restrictions on external work don't apply during May to August.

Second, depending on what area you are in, I wouldn't put too much hope into external awards. There is a lot of external funding available for Canadian grad students, but as an American, you won't be eligible for most of it. In my case, I was eligible for two major awards—the Quebec provincial scholarship for international students (PBEEE) and the Vanier CGS. Since you're not from one of the countries with their own quotas (e.g., Belgian Wallonia), you'll end up in the general category for the PBEEE, which is ridiculous competitive. Basically, each university in Quebec can nominate four people, and ultimately a random number between five and twenty will get awards, depending on how much extra cash the Ministry of Education has on hand. I didn't even make it past the McGill stage when I applied.

The Vanier, on the other hand, is one of the most prestigious awards in Canada—$50k per year for three years, non-taxable. Each university has a quota of nominations, assigned over a three year period. (In my case, 36 SSHRC nominations over 2009-2011, but only 10 were left by 2011.) Then, it goes to a national competition where roughly 25% of nominees get awards (almost all Canadian nominees end up with other awards instead, but as international students, we're not eligible for them). This past year, the SSHRC competition (which is probably where you would be as a Sociologist) was the most competitive inside McGill, as it was oversubscribed, while they nominated practically all applicants for Vaniers through CIHR (biology and health sciences), since it had been undersubscribed in prior years. The number of nominations will be reworked for next year/year following, so hopefully McGill will no longer have the complete dearth of SSHRC nominations, but there's no real guarantee.

As for tuition waivers, there used to be a program where they waived international fees for doctoral students, but that was abolished the term before I started. It sounds like your department has been able to reallocate resources, but it initially seriously messed up my own funding situation, since I was admitted right at the changeover.