FINANCIAL AID AND FELLOWSHIPS

Financing graduate study may require special planning if you have college loans to pay back. Federal Stafford Loans for your undergraduate years may be deferred until after graduate study, and you will be allowed to take out additional Stafford Loans for graduate study beyond the amount of your undergraduate Stafford Loans. The Financial Aid Office of your graduate school will approve a specific amount. Call the Student Loan Division of any major bank for more information. (In securing educational loans, good credit ratings are important. Unpaid credit card or telephone balances can now drastically cut into borrowing possibilities.)

 In the sciences and some social sciences, graduate schools customarily offer teaching assistantships (T.A.), research assistantships (R.A.), and fellowships which cover a significant portion of your expenses and tuition; less financial aid is usually available in the humanities. If you are enrolled in an M.A. program, you probably will not be eligible for a fellowship. Ph.D. candidates may be offered a variety of financial assistance, including loans, tuition waivers, grants, and work -study. Most programs re-evaluate these grants after your first year's performance. In your first or second year (depending on your field of study) you may qualify for a teaching assistantship. Graduate students in Modern Languages can often obtain a teaching assistantship in the first year of graduate study for an introductory section of a language. A web site that you may find helpful is www.fastweb.com.

Graduate students in English and American literature or writing programs may be given teaching assignments in composition classes in their first year. In the natural sciences, most graduate students (including those in their first year) serve as instructors in laboratories or in discussion groups supported by a teaching assistantship or they may assist in research with the support of a research assistantship paid by a faculty grant. Fellowship support in the natural sciences is also available from universities, government agencies (e.g. National Science Foundation), and private foundations (e.g. Howard Hughes Medical Institute), but these awards tend to be highly competitive. In Mathematics assistantships and fellowships are readily available, even for first-year graduate students, so there is no reason to pay for graduate school in Mathematics. Even in a field of study where teaching assistantships or fellowships are not readily available for first- and second- year students, you will probably be offered "work -study" funds from your first year on.

In deciding how many graduate schools you should apply to, remember that despite the cost of application fees ($50 or more for each school), it may be financially worthwhile to apply to a few extra schools where you think you might be granted a graduate fellowship.

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