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Money Matters - Advice
A world-class education costs a good amount of money. Therefore, financing your education is, perhaps, one of the major challenges you will face as an international student.
One of the unique features and services of Edulix.com is its regularly updated and comprehensive database on listed research and teaching assistantships in the different departments of major universities around the world. As a prospective international student, you will find out that this database will immensely help you identify and select the graduate programs and research groups that best fit your interets and needs. All this information is only a click away. All you have to do is, while using the CollegeFinder database program, click on the "assistantship" button to retrieve this valuable information.
In addition, for most undergraduate applicants, our panel of successful current and former international students will regularly offer advices and pointers on how to finance your education.
Most applicants' common question is "What types of financial aid options do I have? There are numerous financial aid types. The most common and well known ones are teaching assistantship and research assistantship. In addition to these, there is a third one which most have no idea, administrative graduate assistantship.
- Teaching assistantship (TA):
The responsibilities of teaching assistant is to help instructors in their labs and classes mostly for undergraduate classes. However in their second or third year, they may be assigned to courses they took earlier. TAs grade quizzes, homeworks and projects, attend problem solving sessions instead of the course instructor. In the labs like chemistry, biology and computer departments, TAs assist students in their experiments and programming. Departments like physics, chemistry, biology and computer science have more positions available for applicants and their aid comes from department budget.
- Research Assistantship (RA):
The responsibility of RAs is to help their instructor in their research projects. Different than most countries, university professors are required to do research for outside institutions and companies and bring money to the department. Depending on the size of the projects, the professors offer research assistantship to one or more graduate students and fund them. Such projects are mostly the dissertation thesis of the student. The money for student funding comes from that projects budget rather than the department itself. The professors select their RAs among the successful and ambitious students. The benefit is for both sides. The project your are working on brings money to the professor and he/she funds your studies. The best way to obtain such financial aid is to directly contact with the professors. They tend to select students who are interested and already have some knowledge in such field, as well as have ambition to work hard. Edulix strongly suggest doing research a little in the field of your interest, find professors working in that field and read their latest publications. Then contact to professor directly try to show your knowledge, interest and ambition. Once you convince the professor and agrees to support you, unless your exam scores are bad, department accepts you!
- Administrative Graduate Assistantship (GA):
This assistantship can be offered by your department or any other administrative departments in the college like business services. The responsibilities of AGA is to help the office personnel in day-to-day administrative works like a secretary. Such assistantship is usually totally independent of your major but may be related to your major I offered by a technical department like telecommunications office which is responsible for phones and internet connection/cabling issues in the university. If you are in EE or CS, you definitely want to check such departments for GA. Such assistantship may NOT pay all your college payments like other assistantships. There are many AGA's that Edulix expert panel members know of paying for one or two courses tuition (or 3 to 9 credits) but the advantage of this is, whatever amount left on your account, you pay IN-STATE tuition which saves you up to 50% of tuition and fees - thousands of dollars a year !
- Hourly paid on-campus jobs:
Such jobs can NOT be considered as financial aid when applying to university and you can NOT get such job before getting acceptance and registering. Such jobs can be considered as additional income for students. The hourly rate differs based on your responsibilities (from $4.50 up to $12.50 as Edulix expert panel members know of). This type of income is NEVER enough to cover your tuition expenses but can cover you living expenses depending on the number of hours you work. If you are financing yourself and this may be a very good opportunity to get additional funds.
Loans, Grants and other financial aid sites coming soon!
The Edulix panel of money-matters advisors also suggests the following:
- Read first hand advice from former international students who had successfully financed their educations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.
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Int'l Education Financial Aid
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