Looking for school with 100% aid on masters

xraymancs
Mon, 31 Dec 2012 11:45:47 +0000

I spent 3 years running the Office of Graduate Admissions at [Illinois Institute of Technology](http://www.iit.edu) and my experience is that if a university has a Ph.D. program, it will reserve the Assistantships (Teaching and Research) and Fellowships for the strongest Ph.D. applicants. The most that they offer Masters students is some amount of tuition scholarship (not very much though).

Since you need full funding for your Masters program (I presume in Computer Science), then you will have to seek it at a university which has a Masters program but no Ph.D. program in your discipline. These universities still usually need Teaching Assistants and so you have a shot at a job like that. You can pretty much forget a tuition scholarship with no work obligations. To find these kinds of programs, you need to look at smaller state schools, those which are not particularly well-known for research or some private mostly-undergraduate universities. In Illinois, examples are Western Illinois University (state) and Loyola University (private).

As a final note, the coursework for a Ph.D. and for a masters is not too different. The big difference is that you have to pass candidacy exams and do 3-4 years of research for a Ph.D. and that is not for everyone.