A reasonable stipend for whole summer

[invokerinjoker]

I am offered a PhD in chemistry in Fall 2016 with a TA position. I contacted my POI and she says I can start the research assistantship with her this summer. It means that I will be one semester ahead of other students. Yesterday she sent me an email asking how much support (stipend) I would need in order not to work outside for the whole summer (May 9 - Aug 15). 

Can anyone give me some advice? 

Thank you.

[TakeruK]

I would just pro-rate the stipend you would get during the regular year for the summer.

[ShogunT]

As F-1 student you may need to take 6-hour coursework in summer if you are an international. In addition, the stipend would vary from place to place. I guess your appointed TAship in the regular season pays you differently compared to RA offered by prof.

I would suggest to prorate as TakeruK said, and try to get in touch with other RA in your dept. about the living and tuition expense in regular seasons/summer at your school. In addition, even each Prof may pay RA differently, there is still a department-wise guideline for RA stipend. So ask the dept. graduate advisor for this information.

[TakeruK]

20 minutes ago, ShogunT said:

As F-1 student you may need to take 6-hour coursework in summer if you are an international. In addition, the stipend would vary from place to place. I guess your appointed TAship in the regular season pays you differently compared to RA offered by prof.

I would suggest to prorate as TakeruK said, and try to get in touch with other RA in your dept. about the living and tuition expense in regular seasons/summer at your school. In addition, even each Prof may pay RA differently, there is still a department-wise guideline for RA stipend. So ask the dept. graduate advisor for this information.

Just to clarify, if you are an international student (F-1 or J-1), you have to be on full-time status at all times, not just the summer. Full-time status depends on each school, so it's not always true that it's 6 hours.

At my school, full time is 36 units where a course is generally 9 "units" (in other schools they would be 3 "credits"). One "unit" here is defined as one hour of work per week, whether it's lectures, homework, readings etc. International students at my school must always register for 36 or more units at all times. We generally meet this requirement by registering for 36 units of research during the summer or in the semesters after we finished all of our coursework. Otherwise, we just register for enough research credits to fill the difference (for example, when I had 27 units of coursework, I registered for 9 units of research). One tip for international students at my school I give is to always register for extra research units if you think you might drop a course (i.e. if you aren't sure you want to take 3 courses this semester, then register for the 27 coursework units (3 courses) and also 18 units of research so that if you end up dropping a course, then you still have 36 units total and you don't have to worry about accidentally dropping below full time status or being forced to take a course you don't want to take because of F-1/J-1 regulations. (my school has 10 week quarters and the add deadline is in week 3 while the drop deadline is around week 8, so if you are dropping anything after Week 3, it's not possible to add additional units without getting special permission)

[ShogunT]

I agree with you TakeruK that the requirements are varied from school to school.

My school is on a 3-semester basis (Fall/Spring/Summer) and requires full-time 9 hours in regular seasons and 6 hours in summer, only if you have summer employment (my case TA), for international students.

[invokerinjoker]

I am not a F-1 student. I did some research and found out the paid for summer stipend for an official graduate R.A is $2500 -4000/summer. Also, the stipend for Fall/Spring semester is $9000/semester, which is ~$2000/month. So Im kinda not sure what should be the number I shoot for

[eternallyephemeral]

5 hours ago, invokerinjoker said:

I am not a F-1 student. I did some research and found out the paid for summer stipend for an official graduate R.A is $2500 -4000/summer. Also, the stipend for Fall/Spring semester is $9000/semester, which is ~$2000/month. So Im kinda not sure what should be the number I shoot for

Do those fall/spring semester stipends include TAing and support for tuition? Because if they do, I would use the grad RA stipend number (if the hours and the hourly rate make sense to you).

[TakeruK]

8 hours ago, ShogunT said:

I agree with you TakeruK that the requirements are varied from school to school.

My school is on a 3-semester basis (Fall/Spring/Summer) and requires full-time 9 hours in regular seasons and 6 hours in summer, only if you have summer employment (my case TA), for international students.

agreed, just pointing out that a F-1 student (although not the case here it turns out) do not have to register for coursework (although technically "thesis research" is a "course")