First Payment

[VentiLatte]

So I'm new phD student as an RA receiving stipend. My offer letter says I get $11000 per semester with 5 installments (so I supposed $2200 each) but now my first paycheck is only $1200 and its period is 9/1-9/30... I started working on 8/16 till now its already 10 days.... Anybody got the same issue? I asked our department but haven't gotten any response yet. I'm really confused how much I'm actually getting paid.

[Eigen]

No one here is going to be able to answer outside of your department. 

Different schools disburse differently- some are by month on the last day of the month, some are bi-weekly, some disburse by semester. 

It's also possible that it was a typo from payroll, and was supposed to be $2200. I had one paycheck come out at $125.0 instead of $1250. 

[TakeruK]

You can only get a sure answer from your department. In addition to potentially being a typo, have you also checked:

1. Have you considered taxes and/or other automatic deductions? Or is the $1200 the "gross income"

2. The $1200 might be for the work period of 8/16 to 8/31, but paid out in the 9/1-9/30 pay period because you started after the cutoff date for the 8/1-8/31 pay period. It is very normal for payroll offices to put the first or last paycheck in a different pay period. I've received multiple paychecks for the same pay period before. That is, the pay period is an accounting thing, it does not always correspond to the actual time you did that work. Or, if they make a mistake on a previous payment, the difference is normally applied on the next pay period.

3. Is 8/16 the official start date of your RAship? Or was it just the day you arrived and started working? In most cases, if you started early, you/your department can make arrangements to pay you extra for the early start date. However, if these arrangements are not made, then you can't be expected to start getting paid before your RA contract begins.

4. Do you have multiple sources of funding? Maybe the $11000 per semester is not all from your RAship and you will receive separate paychecks for each source of funding that will eventually add up to $11000 per semester.

5. If you have multiple sources of funding that don't pay out at the same time, your department might "stagger" your payments. For example, at my MSc school, I was paid via a combination of RA, TA, and fellowship. The TA pays biweekly during the school year, the RA pays monthly during the entire year and the fellowship is paid out in 3 lump sum per year. In order to help us receive a consistent stream of income instead of some months with high income and some months with nothing (and to help the department pay out expenses consistently), they staggered my RA hours so that I received very little RA pay during the school year (as my TA pay covered it) but then received a lot more RA pay during the summer (since there was no TA pay then). At the beginning of the year though, our department clearly lays out our pay schedule and works with us to resolve any issues.

Anyways, just a bunch of guesses of potential things that make payroll weird. When you talk to someone, it should hopefully get all cleared up! If I had to bet though, I would bet it's either a typo or #2.