Rankings for Science

molliebatmit
Wed, 06 Sep 2006 23:40:12 +0000

Well, you’ll have to check with the individual programs to which your daughter wants to apply, but most of them are pretty up-front with funding information. The bottom line in the sciences is that you don’t really want to go to any program that won’t pay you to be there. :)

The funding is generally from the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation (or whichever government agency is interested in your work – the DOD and DOE give grants too). In the sciences, this generally includes full tuition remission and a living stipend. The stipend is adjusted for cost of living; the stipends at programs at which I interviewed were between $25,000 and $28,000 per year. Graduate schools in the sciences will generally not accept more students than they can fund.

I’m a biology graduate student, and as a first-year, I’m funded on a training grant from the NIH. Later I will be switched over to my advisor’s grant money. I get a bill each month from the graduate school for my tuition and insurance, and it says “$0”. It’s a pretty good situation – I mean, I’m not living like a king, but I’m not eating ramen noodles either.