Unless you are independently wealthy or have very generous parents you’re probably wondering how you will financially afford a graduate education. Investigate the following for each school you are considering:

• What type of and how much financial aid is offered
  • The published materials of most schools have general figures about what percentage of graduate students receive financial aid and how much the average aid package is
  • A large percentage of financial aid for graduate students comes in the form of research assistants and teaching assistants

• What are your chances of getting financial aid
  • You usually won’t know if you’ll be offered aid or how much until you’ve been accepted
  • You can visit your desired campus and talk to actual graduate students in your department to get a fairly good picture of what kind of aid is available to someone with your grades and background
  • You can try calling the department directly and someone may be able to tell you what kind of aid you can expect

If you don’t get the aid package you’re hoping for there’s always the possibility of student loans or scholarships. But you’ll have to do the math yourself to determine if graduate school is worth attending without some financial aid from the school.

Financial aid / Scholarship websites

FinAid - This site contains a comprehensive annotated collection of information about student financial aid on the web.
Fast Web - This database provides information about 18,000 plus scholarships, grants, fellowships, and loans representing billions of private sector funding for college students living in the Unites States.
FAFSA - All students wanting to be considered for federal financial assistance (grants, loans and work-study programs) must complete this form.