Paying for Graduate School
There are at least four ways to pay for graduate school:
- get funding directly from the school you will attend,
- obtain fellowships from organizations not associated with the school,
- pay for it yourself with loans, or
- get your company to pay for it.
Once upon a time almost everyone was able to get funded by (1) the school, either with a fellowship, a research assistantship, or a teaching assistantship. All three generally pay your tuition and give you a living stipend of at least $1000/month. If you get a fellowship, they give you the money just because they think you are wonderful. If you get a research assistantship, you are getting the money for doing your research. A teaching assistantship requires that you assist with the teaching of some classes in order to get your money.
Now much of the departmental funding is reserved for Ph.D. students, and you may not have access to it as a Master's student. There are a lot of organizations that give fellowships for graduate school, and you should look into them. Obviously, paying for it yourself is somewhat less desireable than (1) or (2). (4) requires that you have a job at a company, and that they have a good policy on paying for graduate school.
Some of the most prestigious fellowships are the Hertz Foundation fellowships. (These pay you $30K/yr plus tuition.) Another very competitive program is the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship. Drs. Olson and Cornwell have served as evaluators for these fellowships, and Dr. Olson has a summary of thoughts on that process. Notice that the deadlines for these are quite early. Because funding is tight for graduate school, a number of graduate schools have web pages listing fellowship opportunities. As it happens, Cornell's graduate school has a searchable database of fellowship opportunities, which you can access from Rose. Other schools, such as Berkeley, CalTech, GaTech, Illinois, and Michigan also have useful pages.
If you know you are interested in a particular area, and if that area turns out to be a "hot topic" right now, you may be able to get fellowships/funding from special programs. The Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative has funding specifically for master's students in their areas of interest.
