Gradschool hasn't been kind to my free time but I started working on a little side project, for reasons that will become very apparent by looking at U Hawaii's stipend data, and thought the info would be useful to the rest of the forum. At the very least, its info that is frequently overlooked but I would have liked to have access to it when applying to schools
So here's what I did: Using gradschoolshopper I collected the average stipend data for RA and TA which the university gives to the AIP per their academic year. Then, I used the ACCRA Cost of Living Index from C2ER (Council for Community and Economic Research) to weight these stipends based on location. The CLI is generated such that a value of 100 is considered the national average so the first thing I did was weight every stipend by the National Average. I've got a link to the spreadsheet I'm using at the bottom and you can find the weighted values by national average in the column titled "Weighted Stipend by National Average TA/RA". So, the proper way to read the values from this column is, for example
- Duke University claims an average stipend for their TA as $27,730
- Duke University is in Durham, North Carolina which has a CLI of 90.60
- Therefore, their stipend value in an Average US city (with CLI of 100) would be the equivalent of receiving a $30,607 stipend.
Alternatively,
- Boston University claims an average stipend for their TA as $19,300
- Boston University is in Boston, Massachusetts which has a CLI of 137.20
- Therefore, their stipend value in an Average US city (with CLI of 100) would be the equivalent of receiving a $14,067 stipend.
So the values in the "Weighted Stipend by National Average" normalize all the stipends and make it easier to compare the values objectively. Since Honolulu has the highest CLI number, I also found all of the stipend values as weighted according to Honolulu's CLI, so for example, Rice University and their Average stipend of $26,600 will spend in Houston like $38,761 will spend in Honolulu.
I also, just for shits and giggles, pulled the federal poverty line and compared all of the stipend values via a percent difference to calculate a "Proximity to Poverty Line" value. Since the Federal poverty line is the same for all the 48 contiguous US states, except for Hawaii and Alaska, the ordering from best to worst plays out differently that it does based on CLI. I would argue that the CLI relationship is probably a better metric of financial support than the PLP.
In terms of using this data, I would strongly recommend that if/when you get an offer from a number of schools, take their stipend offers and compare them AFTER factoring in the cost of living for the region. I speak from experience when I say that no matter how good the faculty is, or how interesting and strong their research is, you will struggle to be productive and a dedicated hard worker if you are constantly dealing with money problems.
Stipend_Data.xls
Stipend_Data.numbers
[Click the Image for full size PDF]
