Admitted funded applicants - Please respond

[calchas]

A lot of the admitted candidates are using the $, $$, $$$, $$$$ conventions to indicate their level of funding ..

Can you please indicate what the corresponding funding $ amounts you are using as cut-off points for each of these categories?

[rvalchev]

Hey there,

I am certainly guilty of doing that myself. And to tell the truth ... mostly because of ignorance

When I first introduced the different amount of $$$ in my signature it was because Wisconsin's offer of 20K seemed to trump my second best offer at the time of 16k by 25%, so I figured some sort of ranking is needed. But then Wisconsin got itself trumped by Cornell's 26K and also a host of other universities (which I am not admitted to, but have heard about through this forum) offer fellowships of 28K+. So for all it's worth, different amount of $$$ i believe means different things for different people and there are no cut off points ... free for all!

In my mind however, ANY offer of a living stipend with no work requirements is great

Then, if you are wondering for subsequent years, in my limited experience I've reached the following conclusion

10k-15k - on average, the lowest you get
15k-20k - average
20k-26k - you are getting into the middle class of grad students
26k+ - contragulations, you are rich and have to pay for the other's welfare programs

[jeeves0923]

I arbitrarily chose the number of $'s just to confuse everyone...

[singmeat]

my best stipend offer so far is 14k

but i was offered 12,800 from a much higher ranked school :|

[calchas]

Jeeves, you are supposed to be anice guy in this forum! Don't take yourself out of contention for the Antichron award by misdirecting future applicants

Anyway, just curious would MEDS $$$$ indicate funding >35K ?

[bheld]

Singmeat where do you think you'll end up?

[canecon]

A lot of the admitted candidates are using the $, $$, $$$, $$$$ conventions to indicate their level of funding ..

Can you please indicate what the corresponding funding $ amounts you are using as cut-off points for each of these categories?

There is no standard cut-off. Most people just rank their own offers relative to eachother, and by how much money they think a $ is worth.

[jeeves0923]

Jeeves, you are supposed to be anice guy in this forum! Don't take yourself out of contention for the Antichron award by misdirecting future applicants

Anyway, just curious would MEDS $$$$ indicate funding >35K ?

was just teasing

I don't think I qualify for antichron with so many rejections anyhow...

MEDS gave me 30K, but >35 would be fabulous

[DesperateEconomist]

And notice that, while using $$ instead of $ certainly means a bigger offer, it doesn't necessarily mean twice the amount of $ (well, at least it doesn't in my case). And, most importantly, when people assign the number of $s, they are (I guess) only considering the monetary value, without adjusting for the cost of living of the location of each school.

For example, BC offered me $15,600 and WUSTL $9,000, and that's why I assigned $$ to the former and $ to the later. But, if you adjust for the cost of living of Boston and of St. Louis respectively, then the difference would hardly be worth the additional $.

[cjw10]

Another example of not adjusting for cost of living:

16.6k in Santa Barbara < 12.6k in Corvallis...

I'm going old school though: one dollar sign for a full funded offer.