USA Graduate Student Academic Appointments

USA Graduate Student Academic Appointments

This is the most common one. Most of the major universities in the United States started the program graduate students appointments with many different names: Academic appointment, Graduate assistantship, Research assistantship, Teaching assistantship, University funding, TA, RAship, and Fellowships.  The general principle of this program is that you work for the 20 hour / week receive a salary (stipend) and are exempted from school fees. Most of the Masters and PhD programs will offer such positions before the start of each semester and encourage PhD and Masters students to get enrolled for them. In these positions, you have to teach undergraduate students, have to do research in lab, have to work in lab or with professor, have to work under different administrative/academic departments of the university. The stipend of these programs are usually enough to live, plus tuition free, so you do not have to worry anymore. The work of these programs will often support your learning as doing research and teaching with university students. Moreover, students in the United States are working mostly part-time from start to college and university, so you do not have to worry about your loss in studies, learning during timings that you will spend on the job as compared to other students. Since you’ll be on an F-1 student visa in this case, you can stay after completing your studies and settle there, if you like.

How to apply?

  1. The best source of such funding and assistantship positions is the official university or lab/professors’ website. You may do a simple google search and play around with keywords like “your discipline, your broader research area graduate research/teaching assistantship USA”. For instance, in my case I used to search “Environmental Engineering Nanotechnology graduate research/teaching assistantship PhD”. The keywords for your search for these such positions on google: Financial aid for graduates, tuition waiver, fee remission, academic appointment, graduate assistantship, research assistantship, teaching assistantship, graduate Funding, and graduate fellowship. It’s probable that you may not find exactly what you’re looking for or expired vacancies but still, the search results would give you relevant links through which you can find further information or bookmark them for consideration, if not anything else. From the results, you can make a list of universities and contact details(email is fine) of professors to contact. From my experience, prepare a list of at least 20 universities/professors where program and research relevant to you is being offered. It is highly probable and in fact, consider yourself lucky if you’re able to hear back from even 5 of them.
  2. Once you find a relevant lab or professor, You can try to contact US professors (Refer how to contact supervisors), write them a brief catchy email along with your resume highlighting your relevance through your past research and how you can contribute to their ongoing research. Please make sure that the resume must be research-oriented and not job-oriented so edit it accordingly. This is one of the basic mistakes that applicants usually do without realizing that the email you write holds a ‘do or die’ stance and a slight mistake or missing information can drop the professor’s interest in your profile within seconds. Don’t forget that along with you, there would be many others from other parts of the world contacting them so give your best shot.  If they like to hire you as Research Assistant provided that you see their profiles and see if you are a good resource for their research work. Moreover, you can try for teaching assistantships offered each semester, if you get teaching assistantships, you will have the option to get your stipend and tuition fee covered by it But most such options are available for MS leading to Ph.D. or Ph.D. But you can try these for masters as well.
  3. If your target is the USA, it’s better to have GRE ready with you as well as the professor might give a green signal, and then you’ll have to apply formally to the university which would be a formality. For resume formats and GRE preparation, there are a lot of helpful resources and files on this group already.
  4. Besides GRE or TOEFL, you need to fulfill university requirements depending upon the US university, you are applying to.  For Direct Ph.D. (MS leading to Ph.D., you must have at least bachelor's Degree), for Ph.D., you must have Masters/MPhil degree already

Deadline and Scholarship stipend 

There are more than 300 Universities you can target, and deadlines vary from Dec-Feb each year. And almost every university offer scholarship, so you have more than 300 opportunities. The stipend by research assistantships will cover your Tuition fee and living expenses. Universities pay US$ 1500-3000 per month and no tuition fee, which is a handsome amount. 

Drawbacks and limitations

  • Starting from finding universities to applying and visa process to buying air tickets, you’ll have to do everything yourself for this.
  • Competition for funding/teaching/research assistantships is higher as you’re competing with applicants from all over the world and hence, the universities/professors will always have other candidates to choose from. In most cases, getting funding initially at the time of admission is possible only if you’ve extra-ordinary educational credentials (at least CGPA 3.5+, GRE 320+ because there’d be a lot of candidates with such profiles) and potentially a strong research profile in the form of publications/research papers. There are more chances of getting these in Ph.D. than MS. Ph.D. would be fully sponsored in most cases.
  • As stated above, having an additional commitment in the form of work/research may impact your studies but at Fulbright, you don’t have to worry about any additional responsibility. 

What if unable to get funding

  • If you’re unable to get even partial funding, you may consider paying initial expenses e.g. for 1-2 semesters and once you get here, keep proving your worth to professors for potential TA/RA ship positions for upcoming semesters. You’ll usually be able to work part-time during semesters.
  • The worst-case scenario is that you only get admission to university without having any graduate appointment etc position(usually only happens in master programs). You can then just pay a tuition fee for only one semester. Once, you join the university, you will find jobs there. I have not seen anyone who does not get a job during the whole semester. You just go to the relevant labs, and faculty offices to talk and get a job. Maybe you have to volunteer for a few months, but if you are a volunteer at the start and work hard, they will recognize you as a good asset to them, and you will get a stipend and tuition-free from the next semester. 

GRE

  • Appear in GRE – It is not as tough as you think, they have to earn money so they make heavy books) – with a suitable 40-60 days preparation you can easily sail over 310. If you will not apply, you will never get selected. People even got in with 291 on GRE last time with dynamic and balanced profiles and well-crafted Personal Statement and Study Objectives etc
  • The minimum GRE score required to apply for the Fulbright is 138 for verbal and 136 for quantitative. But generally, accepted applicants have a GRE score in the upper percentiles. If you take the GRE test multiple times, you may report your best score, and Fulbright will only look at the scores that score.
    TOEFL is NOT required at the time of the application submissions. You will have to take the TOEFL exam if you are called for an interview. IELTS is not acceptable.
    GRE general (international) test scores are required at the time of application. The deadline to submit your GRE scores is 17th May of that year. You MUST TAKE your GRE before 17th May. If you submit your application before 17th May and you have not taken your GRE by then, you must submit your GRE registration slip with your application. The date of GRE test must be before 17th May. A decent score for Engineering and Sciences on the GRE is 315+ and that for other fields is 310+.
    GRE scores at least in excess of 300 to have a good chance as for 90% of selected candidates the GRE score is in excess of 300 as seen in analysis from recent years. You can improve it later once
    selected for Fulbright but try to do it at once and score at least 300 plus and ideally 310+. You should be done with GRE at maximum by the end of March to leave reasonable time for application and other documentation.

Ingredients of a good profile (In general)

  • On the completion of 16 years of education you should have:
    1. A CGPA in excess of at least 3.3
    2. At least one relevant project
    3. At least 2 versatile internships
    4. A conference publication or local HEC recognized research paper would be an added advantage
    5. Attended at least 2 relevant seminars, 2 conferences and if possible 1, 2 workshops
    6. Appeared in IELTS/TOEFL ideally with 7.5/102+
    7. Taken GRE with at least 310-315 score
    8. At least two relevant online courses from Coursera etc.
    9. Some co-curricular and extra-curricular achievements are a plus
    10. Adequate SOFT SKILLS which we often miss, many of us have good profiles but we don't know how to give good interviews, how to write SOPs and research proposals, how to professionally mail
    professors etc. Learn all of these with full protocols. P.S. Those who have passed this stage and didn't have all this armory need not to be demotivated, it is aimed at young BS students who have just joined or have still time left to improve their profiles. You people must inform and help your juniors, siblings, friends, cousins, etc. and help them do better since BS level. We often focus on big things once we are done with BS but those things are possible only when maximum students will be armored by the above-mentioned resources. Students can divide such goals into short-term objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) and then execute them semester by semester. Mind that whatever you do today will play a major part in what you will get tomorrow.

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