summer tuition...?

[flagler20]

How common is it to be funded for the academic year but have to pay for your summer research credits?  This is a little embarrassing, but I am on an academic year fellowship, and have been all but guaranteed a second year on the same academic year fellowship, as well as funding for my 3rd and 4th academic years.  Feeling secure about my funding I gave nary a thought to how my summer credits will be paid for.  If I'm not funded then of course I wouldn't be required to take courses, but summer is when I will be in the field, doing the research, and thus it makes sense to register for research credits in the summer term.  I would also meet my credit requirements earlier by doing so.  So how common is it to be funded for the actual research undertaken over the summer, but the tuition for the research credits coming from out of pocket?  Is it more common to register those research credits in the fall and spring semesters for which your tuition is waived?

[zabius]

Most of the grad students that I know register for research credits during the fall and spring, but don't register for summer credits even if that's when they do the bulk of their work. You don't need to be enrolled in summer classes/summer research credits to extend your research into the summer. This means that there's no summer tuition to pay... just living expenses (rent, bills, food), which can be paid using the money from your TA/RA stipend or fellowship. In my experiences, some schools will divide your yearly stipend into 12 monthly payments, but other schools will divide your stipend into 9 monthly payments and not pay you over the summer. In that case, it's best to just put some of that money on the side during the academic year so that you have money to pay your living expenses during the summer months.

 

If you want money to help cover summer travel costs (you said that you'd be in the field), your school may have special research grants that you can apply for, either through your department or through the graduate school itself. If you want to stay on campus during the summer, there may be extra funding opportunities via summer session teaching assistantships.

Edited March 3, 2013 by zabius

[vertices]

It's probably somewhat field dependent. In my field, it's uncommon to take research credits over the summer. At my institution, while some such credits are required, they are so few in comparison to what actually ends up being taken during the school year that no one feels pressured to do so. As for being funded during the summer so that you can pay the rent and such, I would say there's a spectrum -- some people are funded by whatever grant/fellowship they are on during the school year, some find somewhere else to fund them for the summer (e.g. summer fellowship/research opportunity or internship), some TA/teach summer session and some struggle when their advisor doesn't have the money.

 

Ask others in your program if they take summer credits and/or how they fund themselves over the summer.

[rising_star]

Depends on the university. At my MA institution, people took research hours over the summer because we had summer tuition waivers and, if you were a TA over the summer, you were required to enroll a minimum number of units. At my PhD university, we don't get tuition waivers over the summer so no one enrolls for research hours over the summer.