What is your stipend and how do you make it work?

[raise cain]

For my PhD at a Quebec University with low tuition (1300/semester and goes down after 2 years to nearly a couple of hundred bucks)

I got a base fellowship 12K/3 years plus TA work 3K a semester, and RA work about 3K a semester.

So about 24K a year.

I also got a non-renewable university award of 10K for my 2nd year.

 

Not great... but cost of living is super low in Montreal and I'm able to save to pay off my previous 45K+ student loans. I hate that Canadian schools offer such low base stipend. They rely on us getting external funding (and when you do get it, they take away their own money....)

 

For instance, McGill offer 17K 1st year, then 12K 2nd year and that's it for base PhDs (unless youre international) and in certain programs (like Comms) there's not a lot of TA jobs either.

[Biostat_Assistant_Prof]

So I was interested in going more in depth with cost of living and field of study. 

 

New poll found here 

[Francophile1]

I would me more interested in hearing stipends from humanities students...I assume it is way lower than engineering and math related departments...

[TakeruK]

During my masters in Canada, my stipend was on average, $36k per year over the two years (it was very unevenly distributed though...I received $42k in year 1 and $30k in year 2!). There's no tax on stipends in Canada but we have to pay tuition out of our stipend, so after tuition, it was about $29k per year. For my wife and I, our total living expenses was about $34k each year...the majority was on rent, food and our car. My wife made a decent salary, so we were able to save a bit in those years.

 

Now, in the US, my PhD stipend pre-tax is also $29k per year (and tuition is paid for). Rent here is much higher ($17k this year), but we sold our car. However, we also have the increased cost of my wife's heath insurance ($7k!). The stipend is enough for a single grad student (living on campus or sharing rent with roommates) to live on AND save money (I think the cost of living would be around $24k/year for a single student), but it's not really designed for supporting 2 people. Currently, it seems like our total expenses will be about $10k more than our income. It's harder for my wife to get a job in the US (immigration issues) but hopefully she will find one soon. We have savings from the previous two years to absorb a loss this first year, but we are hoping to start saving money again next year. I don't think we can continue living here if we were to lose $10k every year.

 

The stipends from the offers made to me last year ranged from $18k (in an expensive place to live) to around $29k (from schools in both expensive and cheap places to live) to $36k (in a really cheap place to live, but was undesirable for other reasons)!

[Swagato]

I would me more interested in hearing stipends from humanities students...I assume it is way lower than engineering and math related departments...

 

The place I am likely going to end up at is $28,000/12 mo, x 5 years. First two years no teaching requirements.

The others range between 18-20,000, but I do not know the details.

USC is an exception and offers close to $30,000 but location and living costs offset this a lot.