Graduate Schools Don’t Have to Be Expensive — Here’s How to Discover Graduate Assistantships to Waive Tuition & Get Paid.

Are you thinking of attending/applying to graduate school but can’t afford to go at the moment?

Are you a current grad student who would like to find a way to reduce tuition and get paid?

Are you worried that your current undergrad GPA will prevent you from getting the position?

By the end of this article, you will be able to…

• identify the potential places to look for Graduate Assistantships
• request for the opportunity to interview/apply for the role
• prepare necessary materials to submit to the hiring manager

📢Side note: This article was written for mostly Master’s students because it can be quite difficult/rare to get these grad assistantships as a Master’s students. For PhD students, these opportunities are normal because they’re often given to them.

From my understanding, the advice below should apply to any public university in the United States due to similar university policies and I am not entirely sure if it also applies to private university, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

Article Outline

1. Quick Intro about Grad Assistantship

2. Misconceptions

3. What I Did and How I Received the Positions

4. What Types of GA Are There?

5. When to Act and What to Do

6. Final Thoughts

1. What is a Graduate Assistantship? Are There Benefits of Holding One?— Source

Graduate assistantships provide a tuition waiver and a modest stipend, and are awarded through students’ major departments. The award process is usually in conjunction with the department’s initial offer of admission to their graduate program.

To be hired and receive the associated tuition waiver, you must also be enrolled as a full-time student. There are exceptions, part-time students who work half the time may receive half tuition waiver depending on the department.

Other obvious benefit is to gain work experience or exposure and this is a huge resume booster while working on your graduate degree. Requirements are different in many departments across every university, so I’d suggest you to do your own digging here.

Next, let’s read some of the misconceptions about these job roles.

2. Misconceptions about Grad Assistantship Opportunities

“The only way to earn graduate assistantships is to have a high GPA and recommendations from professors”

My experience: I finished undergrad with a 3.0 GPA (I barely made the cut) and used my volunteer experience as a way to compensate the lack of book knowledge. My case may be an exception, but actual hands-on experience beats grades 100% of the time and every role I held did not require any big brain power ever. They provided trainings before and during the semester, so I learned as I went. Except for the GAA position which I actually had considerable knowledge about writing, mentoring, and teaching.

“Graduate assistantships are reserved for candidates with the experience”

My experience: this is true, but it doesn’t mean that those who never had experience are cut from the list. Apply and show that you have a genuine interest in the research project (fake it if you just want the job though I don’t recommend it); most of the times, professors/administrators want to hire graduate students who are self-disciplined and have high interest in providing high quality service.

“Graduate assistantships are limited in my department because my department is not science/business focused and research labs are underfunded”

My experience: this is not true, colleges collaborate with each other all the time and it’s possible to get hired by different departments as long as your department is also involved in the project. They also rely on each other’s budget, so it depends. Each project is different, some may hire 1 or 2 students and some may hire up to 10.

Now that we debunked some of the popular misconceptions, let’s find out what GA’s are available to us.

Next, we’ll dig into what actually happened before and after I got in grad school!

3. How Much I Actually Saved, What I Did to Discover and Receive the Positions

How Much Did I Save? Before I graduated with an M.S from university, I held three different graduate assistant positions (Grad Research Assistant, Grad Lab Assistant, and Grad Administrative Assistant) in three departments. I want to share how I discovered these opportunities to pay my way through school and received the offer to come back semester after semester even after I graduated.

Here’s a quick summary on how much tuition I avoided and the stipends I received: GSU Tuition (2019–20)

I did five graduate semesters with a total of 57 credits (switched program between 2nd and 3rd semester) and the total tuition was roughly $29,424 ($4,648 - 11.4 credits per semester on average) including mandatory student fees , or $25,824 without student fees.

With the GA positions I found, not only I managed to avoid paying tuition but I also got paid a total stipend of $14,500 for all 5 semesters (roughly $2900 per semester on average).

So in reality, I avoided approximately 40k (stipend + tuition) damage from joining graduate program at a state school in Georgia.

What Did I Do to Discover and Receive the Positions? There’s a couple of things that I asked myself about my current school, for examples:

❓Question 1: What departments may have the most funds?

Reason: just because you’re a part of a department, doesn’t mean you can’t get hired by other departments (mentioned above).

Does your department collaborate with other departments? departments often work together, so they could request higher budget/fund for their long-term projects.

Ex1: college of business often collaborates with college of sciences on consumer psychology and behaviors.

Ex2: college of education works with college of sciences to find out how mental health affects students’ learning and development.

Suggestion: Look up these departments, websites, research centers, research professors , faculty’s past-and-ongoing projects. It doesn’t hurt to ask and the worst thing it could happen is they say no :)

❓Question 2: If professors aren’t hiring, what administrators may be hiring?

Reason: every university offers similar departments under different names such as Student Success Department, Instructional Technology Service Department, Department of Athletics, Community Outreach Program, etc. You get the idea.

Suggestion: once you’re done scouting these departments, find out the contact info for the directors, coordinators, and managers. Call them and ask if they are hiring. If they are, say that you’d like to apply and send in the resume.

What Actually Happened

Due to a non-competitive GPA and the lack of experience (some research experience), I did everything above, emailed 50+ professors, called every single research center, and administrative office that I could find. It was almost like a detective work but worth it; I not only received some responses, but also found out who were hiring through their colleagues who weren’t hiring (this is a valuable information).

Once I got the professors’ and administrators’ attention, the next step was obviously to prepare myself for interviews, professional presentation, and genuine interest in working together with them.

Here’s a few old paper work in case you’re curious:

Cool Tien, but where do I fit? Aight, let’s see some of the popular available GAs in almost every public university!

4. What Types of GAs Are Out There? Source#1 Source#2

🔬Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) — High/Medium Pay & Difficult to Get

Graduate students conducting academically significant research under the direction of a faculty member, who may be a regular teaching faculty member or a principle investigator on an external grant or contract.

💻Graduate Lab Assistant (GLA) — High/Medium Pay & Difficult to Get

Similar responsibilities as above. The difference may be that GRA is heavily involved in a research and GLA is involved in lab-related tasks, supervising and grading.

👨‍🏫 Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) — Medium Pay & Difficult to Get

Graduate students may not have a primary responsibility for a course, but may serve as discussion leaders in breakout sections, grade papers, or assist the primary instructor of a course in other ways. GTAs may also engage in a range of other instructional activities that are not tied to a specific course (e.g. proctoring for multiple courses, tutoring, advising).

📋Graduate Administrative Assistant (GAA) — Medium Pay & Easy to Get

Graduate students who provide academic and program support. GAA responsibilities are administrative in nature and consist of duties unrelated directly to teaching or research. Any student accepted into a graduate degree program may be appointed as a GAA.

⌨️Graduate Assistant (GA) — Medium/Low Pay & Easy to Get

Similar responsibilities with GAA but GA can be anything and does not have a specific description.

Understand that some of these positions are more competitive compared to others, so make sure you do some volunteer work beforehand. ( learn the skills first, the pay will come)

Now that you know the types of GAs available and what may fit you the best. Now what? the next part is important and this is where you must take action asap

5. When to Act and What to Do

Graduate Positions are limited and unpredictable especially with the pandemic on top. The earlier you take action, the higher chance you’re like to receive calls/emails back from those who are in charge of hiring GAs. The best time to start was years ago, the 2nd best time is now :))

Top Three Things to Focus on Now

📍 Full Concentration on One Thing

Reason: Whether it’s research, tutoring, mentoring, or customer service, you need to be marketable to sell yourself to the professors/administrators. What can you actually bring to the table?

Even better if you’re still in undergrad, look up these positions beforehand, find what you lack in and get exposed to this type of work. So when you get interviewed, you’re able to provide detailed answers and how your experience could support the professors/administrators.

If you’re already in grad school, it’s still not too late to find volunteer work and get exposed. Once you have the experience, it’s a fair game.

They might just hire you right off the gate when you show great interest and enthusiasm in the opportunity. Genuine energy is contagious ;)

📍 Prepare an Email Template and a Call Script

Reason: This is key when sending out 30+ emails to administrators and faculties, we want to have a consistent and clear message. It also allows us to be efficient in the way we communicate what it is that we want. Here are the templates that you can use:

Email Template Sample (reuse if you’d like)

“Dear Dr. PhD,

My name is Tien Tran an incoming graduate student pursuing M.S in Instructional Design & Technology within the College of Education & Human Development. I am interested in applying to be a graduate assistant for Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Online Education and would like to know if there are openings for your project for Fall 2021/Spring 2022. I understand that you are busy, I’m more than happy to meet and discuss my potential involvement in the center/project.

I have attached my resume and please let me know if there are any other information that you would like me to provide. Thank you and I look forward to hearing back from you”

Call Script Sample (use this when you’re calling the office numbers)

“Hello my name is Tien, I am currently a graduate student in College of Education. I came across your project on the school website and am really interested in your work/ the mission of the research center. I’m calling to ask if the center is or you are currently looking to hire graduate assistants”.

📍 Have a Fully Polished Resume Ready

Reason: This is obvious one, besides GPA, how else would you be evaluated? Treat this like you’re actually looking for a real job because it is a real job that pays X amount of tuition and a monthly stipends for a full-semester.

Take the time, utilize the university career center and have them look over your resume. This will be one of the determining factors whether or not you get a response back.

6. Final Thoughts

Graduate Schools can be expensive, but it doesn’t mean you can’t pursue it. Once all the options are exhausted, I would then consider taking out loans to pay for school. Otherwise, I would look for university positions that allow you to work from home or offer flexible schedule, so you can have other source of income coming in.

📢Side note: with the current situation during pandemic, these GA opportunities are scarce due to less funding, less office support needed, and pause on projects. I’d take action asap since not only you’re competing with new students coming in but also returning grad students because they can call dips on these positions.

Good luck and feel free to message me if you have any other questions!

Full Disclaimer: I am simply sharing this piece of advice based on my university career experience and online research. Your experience may be different with your university.

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