Graduate Assistantship

Graduate Assistantship is guaranteed financial aid with duties in teaching, research or school management. Usually students receiving the assistantship will receive monthly stipends plus a partial or full tuition waiver, the total financial aid value will be around $30,000 - $45,000 USD per year, enough to cover all the tuition and living cost (roo... m and board). In order to receive the assistantship position, one must be willing to work ( 20 hours per week) while pursuing his/her degree. Generally speaking, there is a competition for the assistantship positions, this is especially true to the international student because assistantships are the major or only BIG financial support resource available for international students in most universities at graduate levels.. How can I be secured for a Graduate Assistantship? For majority of the international students, after taking the TOEFL (and GRE, not mandatory but give you more options), they start to conduct the internet search through Google, it is very easy to find the assistantship info from webpages of over 2000 universities in the US alone, however, there are two big problems: 1) University website is NOT under the control of individual professors, schools website can only provide general information, not up-dated specifical assistantship job. Even when the assistantship jobs are not available, the general information is still there, and could be there for years, misleading many international students. 2) Even if some assistantship positions posted on school website are truly available, if you can find it through Google search, many other students from around the world can do the same, consequently, if you send in your application targeting these positions, you will be facing a hot competition from your peers because you are only one fish in a big "fish pool", therefore, your slim chance is further diminished. Another tricky factor regarding the assistantship is the source of funding. If the funding is from the department or university, all the students ...Read More