Financial Support for Graduate Students

The Physics Department provides internal fellowship funding to a number of the students admitted each year. The majority of these internal, donor-funded fellowships are for the first year in the program, covering twelve months; a small number of three- and five-year fellowships are also awarded. There is no application process for departmental fellowships; all admitted candidates are considered for them.

A student beginning PhD study with a fellowship has a great deal of flexibility in planning his or her graduate program and in seeking out a research group. Each fellowship recipient is responsible for finding a research group that will provide funding once the fellowship support has been used; students with multi-year fellowships are expected to have joined a research group by the beginning of the second year. Additional information on fellowships for graduate students in physics is available through the Office for Graduate Education.

External Fellowships:
 
1. Students interested in applying for an outside fellowship, should alert the Academic Programs Office as they start the process.  We can help answer any questions you might have, and it gives us notification that such an application is taking place.

2. If you are successful in an external fellowship, the Department can supplement any which covers 45% of a 9 month cost (tuition + stipend) contingent upon our funding situation, and if we have received notification of the application, per point 1 (we need to assist with our fellowship budgeting).

3. Physics also has a policy where any student who receives an outside fellowship covering 45% or more of a 9 month cost will also receive a $1,500 discretionary fund from the Department.

Several external fellowships require departmental nomination and have a limited number of available spots. If you are interested in one of these fellowships, you should speak to your research supervisor about your interest. Some of the most common are listed here:

• Apple AI The PhD fellowship in AI/ML was created as part of the Apple Scholars program to support the work of outstanding PhD students from around the world, who are pursuing cutting edge research in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Managed by the OGE.
• Google AI Google PhD Fellowships directly support graduate students as they pursue their PhD, as well as connect them to a Google Research Mentor. Google PhD Fellows are a select group recognized by Google researchers and their institutions as some of the most promising young academics in the world. The Fellowships are awarded to students who represent the future of research in the following fields: Algorithms and Theory, Distributed Systems and Parallel Computing, Health & Bioscience, Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization, Machine Intelligence, Machine Perception, Natural Language Processing, Networking, Quantum Computing, Security, Privacy and Abuse Prevention, Software Engineering, Software Systems, Speech Processing. Managed by the OGE.
• Mathworks These graduate fellowships provide support to graduate students within the School of Science with a preference for students who are active users of MATLAB and/or Simulink. Managed by MIT School of Science.
• Pillar AI A program for final-year Masters or PhD students in AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science, the MIT-Pillar AI Collective Fellowship provides funding and support to promote the commercialization of their innovations.
• Two Sigma Two Sigma’s PhD Fellowship is open to all doctoral students who are expanding frontiers in a STEM field such as statistics, applied mathematics, computer science, and physics.

Research assistants receive full tuition, living stipend, and health insurance in exchange for conducting research on behalf of a faculty member. This faculty member also serves as the supervisor of the student’s individual research project that will become the PhD thesis.

RA work generally covers the full academic year, including summer. The amount of time spent on RA duties depends on the time needed for required course work as well as the requirements of the research group. For new graduate students taking classes and preparing for the general examination, research duties normally require 20 hours per week or less. After two to three years, research usually becomes full-time.

In addition to courses, students conducting research register each term for a research subject, providing academic credit for research work. The number of units varies from 12 to 36 according to the approximate time spent weekly on research. Research subjects include:

• Pre-Thesis Research (8.391, fall; 8.392, spring and summer): students who have not yet completed the General Examinations
• Thesis Research (8.THG); all students after passing the Oral Exam

Note: For more detailed information regarding the cost of attendance, including specific costs for tuition and fees, books and supplies, housing and food as well as transportation, please visit the Student Financial Services (SFS) website.

Teaching assistants receive full tuition, living stipend, and health insurance in exchange for supporting the Department’s teaching program. TA responsibilities can include grading homework and exams, tutoring, conducting office hours, or, less often, teaching sections of a course. TA work requires up to 20 hours per week in addition to research or class work the student is engaged in. TAs register for 12 units of Physics Teaching (8.399), which provides academic credit for their work.

Having a TA appointment can serve a variety of purposes:

• support departmental teaching needs
• encourage students who wish to hone their teaching skills
• help alleviate funding pressures on the faculty
• facilitate a student’s transition to a different research group

TA assignment process:

Students may request nomination as a TA, or they may be assigned a term as a TA by their research supervisor.

Each of the four divisions in the department has a standard guaranteed number of TA positions per term. Research supervisors submit names of students to be considered for TAs to the Division Head, who compiles the division’s list and provides it to the Academic Programs Office.

Students on the department’s TA list are asked to select their top choices among the subjects offered in the upcoming term, and every effort is made by the TA Faculty Coordinator to match student requests when possible. Teaching faculty may also request a specific student to be assigned to their course.

While TA appointments are typically made only after the first year, very occasionally a first-year graduate student will be supported by a nine-month (fall and spring) TA appointment. Students with a first-year TA normally join a research group and are supported by an RA beginning in their first summer.

Note: For more detailed information regarding the cost of attendance, including specific costs for tuition and fees, books and supplies, housing and food as well as transportation, please visit the Student Financial Services (SFS) website.

Teaching Resources:

• Teaching Assistant handbook

While many students continue from their first RA to a thesis in the same group, others elect to change research groups, for a variety of reasons. An RA who wishes to change groups or research direction should feel comfortable reaching out to talk to other professors about different opportunities.

However, students are responsible for notifying their current supervisor of their intention to leave a group, and they are expected to continue working in the research group as long as it is providing funding.

To facilitate a transition between research groups, each student is guaranteed one semester of transitional funding in the form of a TA.

Students who wish to discuss their interest in changing their research group are welcome to talk with Academic Administrator Shannon Larkin or with Graduate Student Advocate Claude Canizares at any time.