Tuition waived is great, but only if it leaves you enough to live on. Conversely, having to pay tuition out of pocket can be not-so-great, unless the tuition is really low and the amount is really high.
I’m assuming that since you can’t decide between the two, the research is equally appealing to you, and I checked rankings and it looks like within the field they are equally well-regarded. You’d probably know better, though - are you more likely to get the kinds of jobs you want from one or the other?
University of Cincinnati
First of all, why do you only have to pay $8,000 in tuition? Is that per year? Are you getting a discount? UC’s website says that the annual tuition and fees for non-resident graduate students is $26,210.
Anyway, let’s assume that you really are only paying $8,000 a year in tuition. You have a scholarship of $20,936 and a living stipend of $22,100. Let’s assume that your health insurance is $2,000 a year, and comes from the scholarship budget, so let’s say an even $10,000, which leaves you with about $11,000 from the scholarship. Even without assuming that the leftover amount from the scholarship can be used however you like, you still have a $22,100 living stipend - which is small but doable in a lower cost-of-living city like Cincinnati. If you CAN use the scholarship however you like, then you have $33,000 to live on.
University of Georgia
Yes, your tuition is covered, but you only have a $12,193 living stipend. That is only 103% of the federal poverty guidelines for a single person in the United States. You’ll pay virtually no tax on that, but let’s say that your health insurance is $2,000 a year, so make it $10,193. So let’s say that you have about $849/month to live on. To me, that sounds unacceptably low.
Athens has a relatively low cost of living; a quick search shows that you can probably rent a studio or share a 3-4 bedroom apartment for $300-500 (sharing is on the lower end; studio on the higher end). So let’s say you pay $400 in rent. Let’s assume that your total utilities in this share come out to like $50 and your personal phone bill maybe about the same, so that’s another $100. And let’s say you’re pretty frugal with food and you spend like $200 a month on groceries and food. That’s $700/month, leaving you with an additional $150 to spend on other requirements like entertainment, transportation, clothes, books, emergencies, savings, etc. That’s not even including a monthly bus pass. That sounds unacceptably low, even if you are eating beans and cabbage and riding the bus and never, ever leaving the house - which also sounds like a recipe for burnout!
Never having lived in Athens, I don’t know whether you need a car or not; I’m from metro Atlanta and you definitely need one there, and I currently live in a small college town and you need one here (well, I guess you could get along without one, but it’d be difficult and you’d have to live in a more expensive neighborhood, and during the summer when the buses run less often it’d be even harder). A car, obviously, would squeeze you.
Personally, unless you really preferred UGA for some reason - or had some reason to believe that your stipend would go up significantly in the next year or so (like, double) - I would much rather live frugally but comfortably at UC than panic and scrimp at UGA. A recent study that was covered by the CHE showed that students who have higher stipends finish more quickly and do more things that enable them to get jobs (publish, present, etc.) than students with lower stipends.
