Computing the Cost of Graduate School and How to Get Funding

Most graduate students in Clinical Psychology are funded for all years of graduate school through a combination of assistantships, clinical stipends and tuition waivers. The assistantships are part-time work as teaching or research assistants, in which the graduate student works for faculty as a helper in courses or on research projects. Many assistantships combine activities in these areas. A clinical stipend is paid for engaging in part-time clinical work. Students usually work half-time in psychology clinics. They usually do this after the second year of the program. Over the course of the four years in the program, most graduate students will have assistantships and clinical stipends. However, these assistantships and stipends are usually only enough money to pay for housing. They will not be high enough to cover all your expenses. Most graduate students are exempt from tuition or have a significant discount, either through a tuition waiver, or by qualifying for in-state tuition at the state universities.

An ever-increasing number of graduate programs do not offer tuition waivers and have limited funding opportunities while the students are in the program. In general, programs that are structured as professional training programs, such as PsyD programs, fall in this category. They often stand-alone as training programs and rely on relatively high tuitions to fund their programs. Scientist-practitioner programs with associated undergraduate training derive their funding from the undergraduates and this enables them to provide tuition waivers to the graduate students. Obviously, this funding is limited and explains why these programs are much smaller than the professional training programs.

You can usually estimate the cost of attending a graduate program before you apply. The tuition and funding situation of any program is usually apparent in the documents describing the program or can be easily acquired by contacting the program. Here is an example budget you can use to estimate your costs:

Annual Expenses

Tuition: 13,000

Housing: 6,000 (500/mo.)

Transportation: 2,000 (100-300/mo.)

Food & Utilities: $3,000

Other Expenses: 2,000

Total: $26,000

Of course, each place you live will have a different cost of living. Also, your particular situation will have its own pattern of expenses. For example, if you live in a city with good public transportation, you may not need an automobile. Your transportation costs will be much less. If you live in a large city, all your costs will be higher, from food costs to housing. As described above, the Tuition category may be much less, depending on whether you get a tuition waiver or a discount.

As you can see, you will need a considerable amount of money to attend graduate school. Even in the best situation, in which you have a tuition waiver and a stipend, you will need some other source of considerable funds. These days, the other source is usually educational loan programs. Many students also use loans, trusts and educational savings programs established by their parents and other family members.

You may have already used loans to finance your undergraduate education and you already have considerable information about how to apply and so on. If you are fresh to the loan programs, here are some links that will get you started.