<p>My older brother is applying to PhD programs and my mother is curious about a PhD students salary and benefits in the program. He’s looking to do a PhD in neuroscience and the specific schools are: UT Southwestern, University of San Francisco, Mayo Graduate School, and UPenn. </p>
<p>On average how much does a PhD student receive in a yearly stipend and what other benefits does he get as far as insurance coverage and what not, if at all</p>
<p>These are all very easy to google, just go to the program website, like this one
[Graduate</a> School: Cost and Financial Support ? Basic Sciences Ph.D. ? UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX](<a href=“http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/education/graduate-school/cost-financial-support/phd-degrees-in-basic-sciences.html]Graduate”>Cost and Financial Support: Basic Sciences Ph.D. Students – UT Southwestern, Dallas, TX)
bio phds tend to have a stipend 25k-30k a year. But keep in mind cost of living can vary so a couple thousand more a one school may be worth less in reality if it is expensive to live there. Usually comes with health insurance.</p>
<p>^Agree with above; it’s true. In addition to the stipend, though, PhD students also tend to get tuition covered/paid for and health insurance through the university. How good that health insurance is depends entirely on the university and the provider they use. My university uses Aetna, and the coverage is very good!</p>
<p>Other benefits will also depend on the university. For example, mine provides subsidized apartments within walking distance of campus; they are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, but most of my colleagues live in them and can get them at some point during their graduate career (the ones who don’t live off-campus by choice). Like all students my ID card allows free or discounted access to many of my city’s cultural attractions, particularly museums. As part of a doctoral consortium, I can use the libraries of nearby universities in and around my city for study if I want.</p>
<p>I totally agree with the advice to take into account cost of living - I had no idea how much it would cost to live in New York, so my original stipend ($31,000) seemed crazy good for the social sciences. It’s still pretty good, but money was tight and necessitated living in a less desirable neighborhood with a roommate. My current stipend ($22,000) is so low as to necessitate a second part-time job - after taxes, $22,000 a year, which is the standard NIH level of funding for doctoral students,is about $1400 (give or take, since I have to take the taxes out myself by estimating). And I’m only getting by because at this point I am married and live with my husband, who pays the majority of our rent.</p>
<p>So make sure that your son calculates the living expenses of the area in which he must live and sees that the stipend actually covers the living expenses - $25,000 will go much farther in Rochester, MN, or Dallas than in Philadelphia or San Francisco. (In fact, as much as I pined and many other beginning graduate students pine to live in an exciting large city, I would recommend - all other things being equal - a small college town. Fewer distractions and much more affordable on a graduate stipend. That said, I’ve enjoyed my time in NYC, despite being really broke.)</p>
<p>“UT Southwestern, University of San Francisco, Mayo Graduate School, and UPenn”</p>
<p>Based on your list, Mayo Graduate School will offer the cheapest cost of living followed by UT Southwestern and UPenn. University of San Francisco will have the highest cost of living. The Midwest and South have the lowest cost of living. The coasts (California and Northeast) have the highest cost of living.</p>
<p>PhD stipends vary based on cost of living, program type (STEM fields pay more than the social sciences and humanities), and funding package (having external funding in addition to the typical university package for PhD students).</p>
<p>Alas, it varies wildly. You’d need to look for each and every individual program you apply for, <em>and</em> consider that against the cost of living in that community. </p>
<p>Something to bear in mind is that it’s like any other job market, affected by supply and demand. The number of highly qualified people that programs look for in their PhD candidates in each field determines how replaceable each one is, and thus how much they’re worth. Humanities fields generally have the lowest PhD stipends, intellectual sciences middle of the pack, and dork sciences (Comp, Chem, some branches of obscure engineering) the highest. With the exception of programs that will turn you into a person with high income potential (MDs being the most obvious example), they don’t offer a stipend except to extremely talented, competed-for students at all.</p>