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UCLA First Year Funding


mxv2

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Hi,

 

I've been admitted to the UCLA PhD econ program with a tuition waiver for 5 years and guaranteed funding for the last four years via TAships. However, I have not gotten funding for the first year. Is it possible for me to negotiate partial or full fellowship for the first year and if so how should I go about it. My other offers are from UNC Statistics and Minnesota Econ and are fully funded for all five years. If I don't get funding is it worth it to still take UCLA over these options?

 

Thanks

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Hi,

 

I've been admitted to the UCLA PhD econ program with a tuition waiver for 5 years and guaranteed funding for the last four years via TAships. However, I have not gotten funding for the first year. Is it possible for me to negotiate partial or full fellowship for the first year and if so how should I go about it. My other offers are from UNC Statistics and Minnesota Econ and are fully funded for all five years. If I don't get funding is it worth it to still take UCLA over these options?

 

Thanks

 

The rule is simple, go to the best ranked school that fully funds you. Minnesota is a fantastic school.

 

If you really want to go to UCLA, tell them that you will accept their offer immediately if they offer first year funding. You can and should ask your LOR writers to reach out to the DGS at UCLA and explain the situation.

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The rule is simple, go to the best ranked school that fully funds you. Minnesota is a fantastic school.

This is too strong. There are differences in areas of strengths and in culture in different programs. Yes, generally one should go to the best ranked program, but it's not the only consideration.

 

If you really want to go to UCLA, tell them that you will accept their offer immediately if they offer first year funding. You can and should ask your LOR writers to reach out to the DGS at UCLA and explain the situation.

Yes

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Hi,

 

I've been admitted to the UCLA PhD econ program with a tuition waiver for 5 years and guaranteed funding for the last four years via TAships. However, I have not gotten funding for the first year. Is it possible for me to negotiate partial or full fellowship for the first year and if so how should I go about it. My other offers are from UNC Statistics and Minnesota Econ and are fully funded for all five years. If I don't get funding is it worth it to still take UCLA over these options?

 

Thanks

 

Congratulations on admission to some great programs.

 

I'm the DGS in my department and here are my thoughts:

 

First, you should let the DGS at UCLA know about your funding offers at other programs and ask if they are able to offer you anything in the first year. That's pretty much all there is to negotiating at this point. Not much strategy to it.

 

Second, assuming you don't get any additional funding from UCLA, you should pick the program that best fits your interests and ignore this very small difference in funding. Do you want to follow the career path of a PhD in economics or statistics? They are quite different. Within economics, what are your fields of interest and is UCLA or MN a better match? MN is a more narrowly focused department and so I would think you either think it is a good fit or not so much.

 

At the end of the day, the stipend for the first year is likely to be in the range of $18-$25 for the academic year. That's a fifth (or sixth) of the total funding over the course of the program. It's large enough to justify picking one place over another if you are close to indifferent between the two. But it isn't large enough to sway you away from what is otherwise a better fit for you. It's also a very small amount relative to your lifetime income stream. Finally, note that the first year of graduate school requires a lot of work and it's important to do well. The silver lining of not having any TA responsibilities is that you'll have more time to focus on your work. It isn't obvious that you are better off working 20 hrs/wk for a stipend in the first year. When you ask the UCLA DGS for funding, you might even just ask for a smaller fellowship to help defray living expenses, rather than a full assistantship. Not all departments do this.

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This is too strong. There are differences in areas of strengths and in culture in different programs. Yes, generally one should go to the best ranked program, but it's not the only consideration.

 

 

Yes

 

I do not believe it is too strong.

 

Your own logic can be turned back upon your argument... if the OP wasn't a good fit for Minnesota, the OP should not have applied and/or they would not have accepted the OP. If the OP was such a great fit for UCLA, they would have offered funding.

 

If, ex-ante, an applicant finds themselves in a situation where their only fully funded offer is truly not a good match, there is a strong case for working and then applying again next cycle rather than attending somewhere without funding.

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I do not believe it is too strong.

 

Your own logic can be turned back upon your argument... if the OP wasn't a good fit for Minnesota, the OP should not have applied and/or they would not have accepted the OP. If the OP was such a great fit for UCLA, they would have offered funding.

 

If, ex-ante, an applicant finds themselves in a situation where their only fully funded offer is truly not a good match, there is a strong case for working and then applying again next cycle rather than attending somewhere without funding.

 

I'm simply saying there are tradeoffs between rank/funding and fit/culture. In most cases rank dominates, but not always. It's also useful to remember (tm_member knows this I'm sure, so "useful" is intended for other readers) that this is a very noisy process. Applicants do learn things through the process and admission decisions by departments have a large amount of randomness.

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