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[quote=Anonymous]This varies quite a bit from field to field. Then there's also variance from school to school within a particular field.

In the sciences, it's typically fully funded - research or teaching assistantship, which includes tuition waiver and a stipend. Research assistantship for the whole time is quite common in the biomedical sciences. Physical sciences (physics, chemistry) and math have a lot of teaching assistantships too. (These departments have 'service courses' that MANY undergrads take). There are certainly research assistantships and fellowships available and top students get them, but teaching then joining a particular researcher's lab and research assistantship is a common path, too. All include tuition waiver + stipend. I don't have experience with other sciences (geo, environmental, non-medical bio) but I suspect its a mix of the two.

Another variable is if an assistantship is guaranteed for the typical duration of degree completion (~5 years plus/minus some). This is where I see the most variation that correlates with 'quality' of program. It's by no means a strong or good correlation, but schools & programs with consistently more funding and more undergrad enrollment can predictably offer assistantships and guarantee funding for the completion of the program. Newer/smaller/fewer rain-making faculty just can't do that.

All bets are off in humanities and social sciences. My friends in these fields never seemed to have stable funding. They eeked it out but it was often down to the last moment to learn if they had the teaching assistantship (and thus tuition waiver) or not. 'Self-funding' was rare. Semesters away from the program and working odd jobs was more common. [/quote]

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