February 04, 2008
A Pretty Sweet Deal
I guess I haven't mentioned this before, but my middle name is Slacker. My parents were prescient like that.
Anyhow, in the quest to fund your MSI you might find that though there are a number of jobs available to bright new SI students, none of them are going to help that much with the price of tuition. Without a scholarship to ease the pain, what is one to do?
Well, of course there are always loans...They're a necessary evil of graduate school (at least for Master's students) but it can't help to look for alternatives, can it?
A little known fact about the University of Michigan and the Graduate Employees Organization (read: union) that teaching or research assistantships are a great way to work and pay for school. They're hard to find (for MSI students, at least) but totally worth it. Depending on how much you work, you can get a full tuition waiver (for each semester you hold the position), health insurance, and a stipend. And yes, that tuition waiver covers out-of-staters, too!
Now, here's the rub. Normally, teaching assistantships go to Master's or Doctoral students in a department for assistance in undergraduate-level classes. And SI only has one of those. However, many other departments hire SI and other students (especially departments with a small graduate student population and very large, popular undergraduate courses). Information on this can be found at http://www.hr.umich.edu/acadhr/grads/postings.html, which gives a list of departments, links to their sites (where job postings and contact information can be found) and information on how often they hire outside of their own department.
As for research assistantships, these positions often go to Doctoral students, but occasionally an interested MSI student will take the leap and contact a faculty member in charge of an interesting project, and end up on the project. So check out active projects on http://www.si.umich.edu/research/default.htm and feel around. It can't hurt to try, right?
Alright, that's it for now. So much to do! Spring break approaches!
-Megan
Posted by messelti at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)