How much financial support do grad students get?
We generally provide full support for Ph.D. students and no support for M.S. students. The admissions offers usually come with information only about the first year, because we have to put the money on the table for those offers, and aren’t allowed to gamble on getting grant renewals or other funding sources. In practice, every Ph.D. student has been supported for at least 5 years, though some have had to work as teaching assistants some quarters, when research grants ran out. Our M.S. students frequently get teaching assistantships also, usually from the large freshman courses of other departments (biology, math, computer science, statistics, …), but we offer no promises to M.S. students. We strongly encourage all grad students to apply for outside fellowships and grants, as the number of students we can teach is mainly limited the number we can afford to support.
