Pros and Cons of a less prestigious university

[warblersrule]

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@MajesticTOASTER

Of all the people I’ve known that have been in grad school (and that’s quite a few people), NONE of them were “fully funded”. Yes, many students are offered jobs as Teaching Assistants or something similar, but they still have to pay for classes, just like any other student.

Possible explanations:
[ul][<em>]You are still confused on what a graduate student is. (If so, I don’t think it can be explained more clearly than in my post above.)
[</em>]You are Canadian. Universities in Canada require tuition, but they take it out of the stipend, which usually still leaves an adequate amount of money for living expenses.
[li]Those graduate students attend a university which neglects to pay its students properly. Usually this is the case with universities of dubious quality, but occasionally reputable universities like Wisconsin will admit graduate students without funding.[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>I’m a graduate student, and every single graduate student in my department is fully funded – as is every student in our sister department and every student in other departments I’ve met. None of us has paid a single penny toward graduate education.</p>

<p>In fact, a good many programs and/or universities won’t even admit students unless they can provide full funding. Examples:

@Northwestern English

We receive between 350-400 applications for the Ph.D. program each year, and admit only those whom we can offer full funding. We look for an entering class of 6 to 8 Ph.D. students.

@Yale

In most departments and programs, doctoral students are guaranteed five years of twelve-month stipend support. Applicants for admission to Ph.D. programs will automatically be considered for all University fellowships for which they are eligible. These awards of financial aid, as well as full tuition fellowships and comprehensive healthcare coverage, are announced at the time of admission. Over the course of graduate study, the typical doctoral student’s financial aid commitment from Yale totals more than $250,000.

@Colorado-Boulder Biology

The department attempts to support all of its graduate students. The support comes primarily from research assistantships and teaching assistantships, both of which include paid tuition.

@Penn Music

Financial assistance is available and we are almost always able to offer full funding to every student we admit. Each year, a number of our students receive fellowships that guarantee full support (i.e., full tuition, fees, health benefits and maximum stipend) for four or five years (subject, of course, to successful progress in the program).

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<p>Of course, all of this is getting quite beside the point. Several of the OP’s prestigious schools (Georgia Tech, Purdue) could actually be a good bit less expensive for in-state students than “less prestigious” schools like the cited Santa Clara and SLU.</p>