Why Graduate School Is Generally Free in the Geosciences
Grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and other government agencies generally have two separate pots of money:
- The money that will pay for field work, lab supplies, and the salary and benefits of graduate students working on projects related to the grant.
- Overhead.
So, if a given project will cost $100,000 to complete, the University generally adds something like 45% to the grant such that if it is awarded, the researcher gets $100,000 and the University gets $45,000. This overhead money is why universities like grants: The more grants, the more overhead cash there is to pay for upkeep, utilities, and new infrastructure. The best way to increase the productivity of researchers is to make it easier for them to have large numbers of graduate students who can do much of the actual labor.
What Graduate Students Are Paid To Do
Graduate schools generally offer teaching assistantships or research assistantships to their qualified applicants. You may be a teaching assistant one semester and a research assistant the next. Teaching assistants are generally paid for 20 hours of work each week that involves class time, preparation, and grading. Research assistants are paid 20 hours a week generally to work on projects related to their own research, but sometimes to help their advisor to wrap up work on an unrelated project. For 20 hours a week you can get paid something like $20 to 25,000 a year, plus health benefits.
If you are a star, try to get guaranteed summer support for a certain number of years. Why not get paid for your work over the summer? Also, you hopefully will get to visit the campus of your top school choices. If you do get this chance, be sure to ask the graduate students what it is like working for your potential advisor--it is good to be aware of any issues before you accept!
Caveats
The main caveat is that while nearly all PhD programs will be free, not all Masters programs are free. At Pitt, for example, we are not allowed to pay Masters students to be teaching assistants. Thus, they must be paid entirely from grant money, and this makes them less of a bargain compared to PhD students. Be sure to find out about how you will be funded, especially if you are applying to a Masters program.
Prestigious Sources of Funding
If you can score a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, top schools will recruit you and give you free trips to their campuses.
People are often interested in studying abroad, but this generally requires advanced preparation in order to secure funding. Most U.S. geoscience graduate students are more or less fully funded by their departments and/or advisors' grants. A lot of funding in Europe comes directly through national governments and isn't necessarily open to Americans. Thus, you have to either get a scholarship (Rhodes, Marshall, Churchill, Fulbright, etc., see "Scholarships"), find an advisor who will come up with money to support you, or be prepared to pay a fair amount of money to go to a foreign graduate school. The Study Abroad Office can provide you with expert assistance.