Do students in your field negotiate scholarship or fellowship amounts?

[financeguy]

This either wasn't a thing when I was in grad school or I didn't notice it, but a friend of mine mentioned in passing even using a consultant who helps to negotiate law and mba tuition amounts. I wonder if this has become the norm in all fields. Do you find graduate students attempting to negotiate their offers to your program? What is the strategy/policy your department takes? I teach in a credential program that doesn't grant aid to anyone so this was a bit of news to me...

[Parasaurolophus]

There is advice that exists out there which suggests that students in my field should try to negotiate their fellowship amounts. I suspect it's mostly misapplied from other fields.

It's certainly not normal, as far as I know, for students in my field to do that, or to get very far doing it. That said, it has absolutely happened, especially with international students, who often need greater support because of ancillary fees and things. I, for one, think all students in a program should receive the same (adequate) level of support, barring special circumstances. (And I think that international students should be supported as much as it takes to get them up to the same level of support as the domestics.)

I can tell you that it creates ill will in a program when some students are offered more than others. Thankfully, my former PhD program no longer does that.

[lightning]

Everything is negotiable, but it must be done politely. This means that you can't approach it like a negotiation with a car dealer or even a potential boss.

Phrases like "I really can't afford to live on ________, and I'm afraid that my work would suffer as a result."

"My current financial situation does not allow me to accept your generous offer."

In addition, in any negotiation, you need leverage. Weigh competing offers out loud, but in a polite way.

[Puget]

No, everyone gets the same amount (well, those on training grants get summer funding and some travel/supply $, but otherwise the same amount). I've never heard of this being negotiable-- generally stipends are set either by the university or the grant funder (training grants, individual fellowships, pay rates on grants) at a set rate. The only thing that might be negotiable is summer funding (i.e., off PI's grant). Other than that, trying to negotiate would seem very naive and weird.

[fizzycist]

Every year, one or two of our admits ask for more. And I usually do my best to make them happy, within the administrative constraints. Because at the end of the day the small amount extra they want is nothing compared to the total cost of supporting a PhD student start to finish.

But it's annoying and I wish our default stipends were high enough that we didn't need to make special accomodations for the few students who speak up to ask for more.

I give all the RA students in my lab the same amount and never hear complaints as it is well above average stipends for our dept.

[financeguy]

I did a bit of googling and youtubing since posting this and am very surprised to see how open a lot of prospective students are with their negotiating process. One woman's video discussing her application to law schools showed an excel spread sheet of initial offers, contact person for negotiation, amounts received after further negotiation, etc. In this video she even showed the scholarship amount emails and/or screens that demonstrated the amounts on admitted student sites. Most of the stuff I'm seeing is still law and MBA but a few are from other fields.

I can understand fellowships being less up for negotiation. With professional programs people are after all paying something and I can't really blame them for taking an aggressive negotiation stance when tuition sticker rates are astronomical. For those of you in Ph.D. departments that provide funding, do you have terminal masters programs that are unfunded and if so, do you see a different rate of haggling?

I said I hadn't heard of this when I was in school but on second though, a friend of mine who was on the wait list at a top Ph.D. program and then was removed from it and admitted with the standard fellowship (at that point in time 10k stipend + tuition) had already received a larger fellowship from a peer school. The faculty member who called to admit him bumped his fellowship amount to match the other school on the spot, making him the highest paid in the department off the wait list! Come to think of it, a couple times I've seen people call/write to give the "no" on attending only to get a better deal in the "what could we do to make it work" conversation but haven't seen that many people ask up front rather than declining.

[nonsensical]

I have never heard of anyone trying to negotiate a graduate stipend in my field, and if they did it would come across very strangely. If someone said any of the sentences lightening recommends to me, I would tell them to take the other offer and potentially give their slot to someone else.

[Vkw10]

Law and MBA programs are quite different from PhD programs. Both are professional preparation for careers with substantial earning potential, with a coursework focus, where students mostly pay their own way. People routinely tell PhD students not to accept any offer without a stipend and tuition waiver, but that's not the norm in law and MBA programs. It's more like negotiating undergraduate financial aid than negotiating a PhD offer.

[bingle]

When I was applying for PhD programs, I did ask for more money from the program I eventually chose. Some programs have one-time recruitment scholarships for entering PhD students, and I received one of those. It wasn't a bump in stipend, but it did help with moving costs. I had other offers to choose from that had much better stipends, so I didn't feel there was any harm in asking.

[financeguy]

Vkw10....I was also surprised at the undergraduate financial aid negotiation process, but I guess that's a different animal since mostly done by parents...seems to be an industry as well.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

In the department where I did my phd, during high oil price era geophysics students were routinely getting TA waiver and much higher funding to stop them from leaving for lucrative industry jobs.
A friend of mine in engineering on several occasions mentioned prospective students asking for more money.

[polly_mer]

As lightning wrote, the student would need some sort of leverage.  Even at the undergraduate financial aid wrangling, there's a definite point at which people are told, nope, that's as high as we're going for you.  I have some close colleagues in undergrad financial aid who have many fabulous stories about parents and prospective students who thought they were much more desirable than they actually were to the particular college. 

I remember one fun story about the parent who flat out said, "Yes, with financial aid, Super Dinky and Closest Neighbor are exactly the same price out of pocket.  Closest Neighbor is worth that price and Super Dinky isn't".  The response was "Hope your student enjoys their time at Closest Neighbor".  The kicker for me in the telling of the story was how that price was so much more than any of the good state schools in the region and thus it was weird to be focused on either Super Dinky or Closest Neighbor for the anticipated major.  It's clear no one really wants your kid, mister, or the price you'd be looking at would be essentially the same as the in-state price for the regional comprehensive.

MBAs and even law degrees far enough down the food chain have been essentially cash cows for the institutions.  Like undergrad financial aid, a small discount from list price to get more warm bodies in the door might happen.  I would be somewhat surprised if the name-brand programs that turn away highly qualified prospective students in droves do much negotiating with individual students.

A highly desirable grad student in areas where competition exists for good enough students may get something upon asking.  However, in my experience and all the stories from colleagues, that particularly desirable student is usually originally offered something very good because it is a competition for the best.  In my fields, being offered a TA position to get tuition remission with a very modest stipend is a sign that the program sees you as a cash cow instead of a novice scientist/engineer who is on the path to success.  Desirable grad students are offered RA support on a particular project or even fellowships to pursue their own line of research with mentoring.

[financeguy]

I asked a friend who's a lawyer why this is so prevalent, other than the presumed natural tendency of those entering the field to make the case. He had some very interesting points since he hold a grad degree as well. Since all law programs submit through a central resource at the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) there are naturally many more apps per person than in fields where they are assembled separately as opposed to just clicking "yes, apply here as well." But that's not all... This central location will by default collect data that ends up on the schools publicly available consumer form called an ABA 509. Two of the critical points on this form (that also affect the US News Rankings) are yield (how many admitted attend) and GPA/LSAT numbers.

The implications of this are that if you have admitted someone, you don't want to lose them to a peer school and lower your yield. Also, a grad program that does not have to be accountable to why they admitted someone who had a good story for a lousy undergraduate GPA or bad test score can easily admit the next person down the line if a more desirable candidate says no or wants an extra 5k. In law, the school will pay a tangible price for having someone whose numbers are lower as opposed to higher in their class. There's no way to get around the public disclosure on the 509 form and more importantly no way to get around the fact that this information will be used in the US News rankings in a metric where the undergrad GPA and test score of those admitted are major factors in the calculation regardless of any "softs" that may have factored into the decision.

I had never thought of this before. In my own field, if someone wanted to admit someone with a 2.3 and a low GRE, there wouldn't really be any price to be paid to do so since program numbers overall are not publicly disclosed in a way that they'd have to "take a hit" for doing so against their peers who would presumably be sporting higher relative numbers. Someone could admit an applicant because they think their interests are trendy or just because they like them personally.  This gives departments more subjective leeway to follow whatever criteria they want to use for applicants who may be objectively superior but also prevents those applicants who do have the hard numbers from having any "teeth" to negotiate.

That said, the oversupply of MBA programs seems to be the main reason for negotiations there... I did see that this doesn't work at the top 3 that (like in law) are need only. Presumably if you get a slot at one of these you'd rather go even if for a higher amount...

[Caracal]

In my own field, if someone wanted to admit someone with a 2.3 and a low GRE, there wouldn't really be any price to be paid to do so since program numbers overall are not publicly disclosed in a way that they'd have to "take a hit" for doing so against their peers who would presumably be sporting higher relative numbers. Someone could admit an applicant because they think their interests are trendy or just because they like them personally.  This gives departments more subjective leeway to follow whatever criteria they want to use for applicants who may be objectively superior but also prevents those applicants who do have the hard numbers from having any "teeth" to negotiate.

I'm sure this varies by field, but GPA and GRE scores are probably a much weaker indicator than "soft" metrics like writing samples, statements and recs for most grad programs. I'm guessing that Law schools, Business schools and, perhaps, medical schools, have lots of people with mediocre college records applying. For most programs, I doubt that you have lots of people with poor college records applying. In many cases it would be pretty silly to differentiate between applicants based on marginal differences in GPA or GRE scores. Imagine a physics grad program is trying to choose between two candidates. One of them has a 4.0 GPA,a perfect GRE score, but just ok evals and other sample work.  The other has 3.5 GPA overall, with a 4.0 GPA in their physics major, good GRE scores. However, this candidate has stellar evaluations which all say they think the person shows enormous potential in the field and their sample work shows that they've already done really interesting work.

I can't imagine many programs are going to prefer candidate number one. If someone with really low GPA scores is applying and is even considered, it would probably be because of exceptional circumstances. Not many people who got B-s in the their Chem courses decide to apply for phd programs.

[financeguy]

This is obviously going to be a different situation when someone is applying to the same field for graduate study they pursued as an undergrad rather than a general program like law. I don't have an agreement or disagreement with your point, but if forced to guess would assume that the predictive validity of "hard factors" is underplayed by those who have the ability to make subjective decisions (in any circumstance) while the predictive validity of their own subjective decisions on "softs" receives greater confidence than warranted.

I'm reminded of a friend in NY who sells commercial real estate, mostly to people who want income properties. When he makes the case for a property based on cap rate, debt service coverage ratio, or some objective metric of profitability, the client "nods" in agreement, taking in the objective data. He is, after all, a "rational" decision maker. Only, however, once the client is able to see the property does a decision occur, presumably on intangible factors. Nonetheless, the client rationalizes their decision based on the numbers. This is apparently less the case when a large corporation is buying the property and sends someone simply to verify the objective data and check of a list of potential difficulties.

I have to imagine a certain amount of this is exactly what happens in interviews for jobs or school programs. My own guess is that if you had to use metrics to predict success, the ranking would be IQ, objective scoring on standardized tests, field GPA, general GPA, portfolio if applicable, letters of recommendation, personal statement, other soft factors. I could be wildly off and this could vary by field substantially, especially in those fields that do not have ways to measure success objectively.