Grad student asking advisor for raise

juillet
Sun, 04 Nov 2012 02:05:03 +0000

I’ve never done this because my advisor’s never paid me directly (I’ve had external funding), but I would say rarely do advisors set their research assistants’ salaries themselves. Often they are paying you from grant funding, and the grant determines what your pay is. For example, the NIH has a standard stipend level for all predoctoral students no matter how many years you’ve been the lab or whether you have dependents. (It’s ridiculously low - just a bit over $22,000 for 9 months.)

Why are you asking? I think you’re unlikely to get one just because you have additional dependents, or because of longevity or something, but if you are doing substantial additional work in the lab (like doing the work of a project coordinator/lab manager instead of just an RA) I suppose you can use language akin to that of a corporate salary negotiation.