Risk of accepting admission offer without funding

[andrestoga]

Hi,

 

Currently, none of my admission offers offer me any funding but I will apply to a very good fellowship in my country that covers at least 90% if not the 100% of my expenses during the 5 years of the PhD program if I received it. The problem is that I will know the result of that fellowship until May 22. Far away from the decision deadline April 15. Meaning that I have to accept one of the offers I have available before knowing if I will receive the fellowship.

 

Is it worth taking the risk? what would happen if I don't get the fellowship? What would the university think of me?

 

By the way, two of the universities I have been accepted were notified that I had applied to this fellowship before they offered me admission so, I don't know if that influenced them to not offer me any funding. It's possible but I'm not sure.

 

Best,

[GeoDUDE!]

Hi,

 

Currently, none of my admission offers offer me any funding but I will apply to a very good fellowship in my country that covers at least 90% if not the 100% of my expenses during the 5 years of the PhD program if I received it. The problem is that I will know the result of that fellowship until May 22. Far away from the decision deadline April 15. Meaning that I have to accept one of the offers I have available before knowing if I will receive the fellowship.

 

Is it worth taking the risk? what would happen if I don't get the fellowship? What would the university think of me?

 

By the way, two of the universities I have been accepted were notified that I had applied to this fellowship before they offered me admission so, I don't know if that influenced them to not offer me any funding. It's possible but I'm not sure.

 

Best,

 

You only have to accept by April 15th if there is funding attached to the offer. You should email your departments to confirm this, but you should be able to accept at a much later date depending on when class registration is.

 

You should not accept an unfunded PhD, especially in computer science where departments have loads of funding for graduate students.

[andrestoga]

You only have to accept by April 15th if there is funding attached to the offer. You should email your departments to confirm this, but you should be able to accept at a much later date depending on when class registration is.

 

You should not accept an unfunded PhD, especially in computer science where departments have loads of funding for graduate students.

 

Well, in my acceptance letter says "This admission is made without an offer of financial support" and later it says "A limited number of Teaching Assistant (TA) positions are available each year and are awarded on a competitive basis.".

 

My POI told me that he could debrief me quickly tomorrow about the financial support and that at the moment he didn't anticipate more documents would be mailed to me. He told me that 7 days ago.

 

Best,

[TakeruK]

I would follow up with your POI and discuss how financial aid for the program would work. That is, how competitive are TA/RAships, and when would you know etc.