I graduated with a Master’s degree last month, which I reflect on here. My wife had graduated with a Master’s degree in May of 2019. The median grad student took out $54,500 in student loans to attend grad school at public universities like the ones that we graduated from. However, the two of us did not bring over $100,000 in graduate student loans into our marriage. In fact, we were both able to use assistantships to get paid throughout our programs. These assistantships also paid our tuitions, giving us both free grad school experiences. These weren’t lucky or uncommon occurrences. What we did is replicable, and I’ll explain how you can do the same.
Should You Go to Grad School?
Grad school is certainly not for everyone. No one should go to grad school because they don’t have a definite career direction after undergrad. Grad school is required for some career fields and can be used to leverage yourself to a higher salary in a field that doesn’t require an advanced degree. However, taking on significant debt in order to stave off a career search isn’t a good idea. As a mechanical engineering undergrad, I didn’t need a graduate degree for a good job. However, I went to undergrad on scholarship and had no debt. I saw an opportunity to specialize into a really interesting field that I was passionate about in ocean engineering. Even so, I was not going to take out debt to obtain a graduate degree. Luckily for me, a mentor of mine from undergrad helped me with the process that resulted in a free grad school education.
Assistantships: the Ticket to Free Grad School
Before speaking to my undergraduate advisor, I researched grad school and came across the concept of assistantships. On an assistantship, you work for the department that you’re studying in as a research or teaching assistant. In return, the department pays your tuition and some of the fees while also paying a stipend for the work you do. Often, the stipend will be enough for you to rent an apartment and cover general life expenses as well. A teaching assistant typically helps with one course per semester by having regular office hours for students, grading assignments, and running a lab. A roommate of mine was a TA and he worked about 20 hours in addition to his own course load and research requirements. A research assistant works with the student’s advisor on his research interests. There’s often a big overlap between the research assistant’s job and their thesis work. Many professors only have the research assistant work on projects related to their thesis. This is a big perk, since a research assistant is getting paid to work on their thesis, instead of having to find additional time for that work.
How Do I Find an Assistantship?
The first advice I received for finding an assistantship was to read. This part requires some work. Go through the faculty webpages for the department you want to study for and look at each faculty member’s research interests. If there are any that you’d be interested in working with/for, read their most recent journal publications. Faculty members that aren’t actively publishing journal articles typically won’t have funding for new graduate assistants. Then reach out to these faculty members via email. Be direct. You’re really applying for a job. Introduce yourself and explain which part of their research interests you and why. Say that you’re applying to their grad program and are looking for an assistantship. Finally, ask if they have the funding for it and ask to meet with them to talk more about their research. You’ll probably need to cast a wide net here. I focused my efforts on two different universities (because they were the only two that had my program in New England), but I had four other schools I was willing to reach out to as well. At the two universities I focused on, I met with five professors and received two assistantship offers. Out of these five meetings, only one felt like a serious job interview. The rest were more laid back. They were spent talking about the professor’s current and future research, the state of their funding opportunities, and touring the lab facilities.
Conclusions
The only way I can recommend grad school is by funding it with an assistantship. There are too many great jobs and careers that can be done without an advanced degree. Taking out loads of debt for an unnecessary degree doesn’t make sense to me. This is by no means a comprehensive guide to free grad school, but I wanted to share my experiences as a way to help others who are trying to do the same thing I did. Please comment below or send me a message with any questions about the process!
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