is stipend enough ?

[christophermccandless]

for people who know the reality in USA , do you think that $18.000  allows a Phd student to live in welfare? I mean, does it cover all  his expenses ? is it enough to balance the living costs required by the american government to get the Visa or you need to finance some gap ? or do they require only the money to cover living costs for the first month before getting the first stipend ?

Edited July 26, 2013 by christophermccandless

[Andean Pat]

Hi, I am not in the US yet, but I have asked this questions and this is the summary of aaaaaalllllllllll the answers:

 

1. Is it enough? That depends on the place that you are moving to. There are several websites that compare how expensive things are in comparison with other places, all within the US. I found these websites around the GradCafe, some of them are this, this one, and this over here.

 

2. Is it enough for the visa application? I can get from your post that you have not applied yet, have you? The international office at your school, once you have accepted their offer, will give you this number. Anyway, in some part of the school's webstie you should have this 'official' information. It was like this that I realised that my stipend covered the expenses, thus the offer was good enough for me. If there is a gap between what the university says you should need to live there and your stipend, then you will have to finance that it. 

 

3. Do they require living cost for the first month? No. When you apply for a student visa, you must show that you can manage your expenses for the first academic year. I also took my offer to the interview, so that they saw that my stipend was for five years. They did not ask for this anyway. 

 

Hope it helps

[TakeruK]

Just to clarify, if you are applying for F-1 student status (the standard international student status) then you need to show proof that you have money to pay for the first year and this will appear on your I-20 document. However, if you are applying for J-1 student status, then you need to show proof of funding for the entire program length, not just the first year. The numbers on the DS-2019 (J-1's version of the I-20) will reflect your total stipend/expenses for the whole program.