Physics GRE Discussion Forums

I was admitted to a big state university for the Physics Phd program, but the letter had no information about a TA position. When I called them they said that they havent decided on offers for the assitantships and wont be sending any out for a few weeks.

My question is it is safe to assume Ill be getting an offer for a TA position? My professors told me most schools wont even admit someone (unless its the very tail end of a class, and its early so Im guessing its not) without offering some sort of assistantship because noone expects to pay for school in physics Phd programs. Anyone have any experience with this?

jb wrote:I was admitted to a big state university for the Physics Phd program, but the letter had no information about a TA position. When I called them they said that they havent decided on offers for the assitantships and wont be sending any out for a few weeks.

My question is it is safe to assume Ill be getting an offer for a TA position? My professors told me most schools wont even admit someone (unless its the very tail end of a class, and its early so Im guessing its not) without offering some sort of assistantship because noone expects to pay for school in physics Phd programs. Anyone have any experience with this?

My guess is they figure out who they will be admitting, and once that is settled, they then sort out the funding in terms of who is getting a fellowship and who will be TAing. If the big state university you were admitted to has a reputation in physics (like top 50), I think you should be confident that a funding offer will be forthcoming. They are probably just working out the details.

Thanks for the quick reply. Im not sure if its that highly ranked, but it is a very large program (University of Tennessee).

jb wrote:Thanks for the quick reply. Im not sure if its that highly ranked, but it is a very large program (University of Tennessee).

Well, hopefully someone can chime in if they know anything further. There could always be a chance that when they crunch the numbers they will see that they can't offer everyone funding, in which case you could be out of luck, but all you can do is wait and see at this point anyway.

However it sounds like they haven't made funding offers for anyone yet, so there is a good bet that yours will be coming eventually.

As an admitted domestic student, I'd be pretty surprised if UT didn't give you at least the same support that they gave their 24 incoming students last year. http://www.aip.org/gpb/pdf_files/232.pdf

So apparently I just got into the graduate school, and they take those applications and then decide about financial aid. I have no idea what percentage of the apps admitted to the grad school get financial aid, but it seems like its almost two separate applications where one is to the grad school and one is to the physics department itself. Has anyone had any experience with something like this before?