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Pay Get Paid for School

From Zero Funding to Graduating Student Loan Debt-Free

November 7, 2022 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. José Riera, who recently finished his PhD in education from Washington State University. José’s offer of admission to WSU did not include any funding, so he initially accepted some student loans and expected to accumulate a hundred thousand dollars of debt before graduation. However, through his incredible resourcefulness, José secured multiple types of funding throughout his three-year degree that paid his education and living expenses and allowed him to repay the student loans he initially took out. Jose teaches us the tactics that he used to land two assistantships, an adjunct teaching position, and 18 scholarships. Don’t miss José’s incredibly inspiring story of overcoming these and other obstacles!

Links Mentioned in This Episode

  • José’s LinkedIn
  • PF for PhDs Community
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List (Access Advice Document)
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub (Show Notes)
Image for S13E6: From Zero Funding to Graduating Student Loan Debt-Free

Teaser

00:00 José: I would also say that you also want to make sure that you craft a very good message so that when people meet you, they not only remember who you are, but they want to know what you’re passionate about and how you’re helping yourself and others in that. Because then they make the connection and say, “Oh, wait a second.” So, they immediately connect as opposed to saying, “Well, he’s just, or José’s just a student in need.” You want to make sure that they have some memorable talk points about what it is that you’re pursuing, your research, your career focus, and the communities that you want to help out.

Introduction

00:42 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts, a financial educator specializing in early-career PhDs and founder of Personal Finance for PhDs. This podcast is for PhDs and PhDs-to-be who want to explore the hidden curriculum of finances to learn the best practices for money management, career advancement, and advocacy for yourself and others. This is Season 13, Episode 6, and today my guest is Dr. José Riera, who recently finished his PhD in education from Washington State University. José’s offer of admission to WSU did not include any funding, so he initially accepted some student loans and expected to accumulate a hundred thousand dollars of debt before graduation. However, through his incredible resourcefulness, José secured multiple types of funding throughout his three-year degree that paid his education and living expenses and allowed him to repay the student loans he initially took out. Jose teaches us the tactics that he used to land two assistantships, an adjunct teaching position, and 18 scholarships. Don’t miss José’s incredibly inspiring story of overcoming these and other obstacles! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. José Riera.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:09 Emily: I have joining me on the podcast today, José Riera. He recently finished his PhD in education from Washington State University, so he has a different kind of funding path than what we normally hear on the podcast. And I’m really excited for him to share for anybody else who’s pursuing a similar degree or has similar funding challenges at the beginning of their PhD. So, José, I’m really delighted that you are joining us here. Will you please tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself?

02:33 José: Well, thank you for hosting me today, Emily. I’m very happy to be here and help you and your mission to support many worthy students obtain funding and guidance to survive what can be a very challenging process. And I consider myself blessed to have met you at the beginning of this journey. So, I was able to pave the way thanks to your support and complete really an incredible journey in a three-year time span, which is amazing. So, just a little bit about me besides the fact, like you mentioned, I just completed my PhD in education here at Washington State University. I’m in the eastern part of Washington, in the town of Pullman. Before that, my background was mostly in business administration. I did a lot of work in inner-city communities throughout the United States, serving mostly Latino and African American neighborhoods.

03:28 José: I have an undergraduate degree in finance from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. And then I have a Master’s in Business Administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. So, my background prior to coming to WSU had been mostly a business administration perspective handling financial and retail aspects of different operations. And I did that throughout the United States. I think through some health challenges and just some personal reflections, I pivoted away into the area of education where I felt the focus was going to be mostly on helping others. And as I entered the second stage of my life working mostly towards was I a good steward of the resources that I was born with? And that led me, among other places, to Washington State University, where, like you mentioned, I just completed my PhD.

Funding the MBA

04:28 Emily: So fascinating. So, this was your second go-round with graduate school, actually. Tell me about how you funded the MBA.

04:37 José: Well, the MBA, it was in the University of Pennsylvania. My parents helped significantly with my MBA, and then I had also won a significant scholarship funding from the University of Pennsylvania, just based on my ethnic background that provided some support. So, I was able to cover that. That was only a two-year program. And I was in a little bit of better financial shape back then than I was coming into my PhD.

05:08 Emily: Okay. So, you didn’t take out student loans, for example, for that initial degree?

05:12 José: No, I did not.

Finances Right Before Starting Graduate School

05:13 Emily: So, tell me about your finances right before coming into graduate school. You just said you were in a different situation, so what was the situation?

05:19 José: Well, the biggest challenge for me was I had, you know, I spent several years in a hospital. And I was recovering from an accident, and that recovery process really wiped out any sort of financial support that I had. I had child support that I was accruing, unable to pay for because I had no income. And then I had just a sheer amount of health-related expenses I kept accumulating. So, that was my backdrop as I looked to complete my rehab and then get my life back in order and decide to pursue something back in education that would give me additional tools and a different perspective on my life is really the genesis of how I connected with you and how I connected with Washington State University, among other schools.

06:19 Emily: Okay. So, we have a big interruption that you just went through in your financial life. Some debts that you had accrued. So, I’m guessing that you did not want to accrue any further debt during your graduate degree. Can you tell me about how PhDs in education are typically funded?

Funding for PhDs in Education

06:41 José: Yes, very good. Well, at least at Washington State University, the program is very, very international. And a lot of the students, especially from Saudi Arabia, from China, they’re actually funded by their own host governments. So, I entered into what’s a fairly small program. My class was only about 13 students. I think I was the only citizen in the entire group. So, that just gives you a sense of the fact that a lot of them received independent funding, and the program itself wasn’t really geared towards providing financial support just because it’s seen somewhat of a, for lack of a better word, a cash cow for Washington State University. Again, you’re having a lot of students that are not only paying out-of-state tuition, but a lot of them are paying even a higher out-of-country tuition. So, it’s a big operation for them. I did not have any sort of support coming into the program.

07:46 Emily: Yeah. So, tell me about when you, like received your offer of admission to Washington State. It sounded like you didn’t receive funding along with that, Is that correct?

07:56 José: That is correct, yes. And they were very clear from the get-go saying we’d love to welcome you into our environment, but we don’t have the financial package or wherewithal to be able to provide any sort of support into your program. So, you’re going to have to find your own way of supporting your education.

Why Washington State University?

08:17 Emily: And was that your only offered admission? Were you looking at other offers of admission at the same time? And if so, how did those funding packages look?

08:26 José: Yeah, so that’s actually a very good question. I was actually based in California, and I had been looking, and in the process of applying for Berkeley as well as University of California Davis, these schools had in-state tuition that was more affordable, obviously. But the big decision for me, there were two main factors. The first one was the fact that these schools, since I didn’t come from a background in education, in both of these universities, and I won’t even tell you about Stanford, because Stanford would’ve been a nine-year program. But these universities would have required me to pursue some master-level educational courses before being allowed to enter fully into a doctoral-level curriculum. And Washington state was not that way.

09:25 José: Washington said, “Look, we realize that you’re not from an educational background, but you have a significantly interesting, eclectic, shall we say, background. You have very strong academic credentials from your undergraduate and graduate school. We will let you start taking in doctoral level courses.” Which helped me at least reduce my academic yearly path by at least two years compared to UC Davis and UC Berkeley. So, again, it was a trade-off in that regard. And then secondly, I had other considerations. My daughter was a student at WSU, and that was a big decision for me to actually come here to make up for the years that I was unable to be in her life due to health issues and my hospital recovery.

Plan for Funding the PhD

10:23 Emily: What a beautiful opportunity. I’m so glad that lined up for you so well. Okay, but, you’re coming in with no funding. So, what was your I guess, outlook at that time? Like, what was the plan before you actually arrived on campus? What was your plan for funding the PhD?

10:41 José: Well, listen, I’m very much of a self-starter. So, at the very least, I said, “This is an opportunity that I am giving to improve my lot where I was, where I was just essentially sinking in debt and not feeling that I had much traction.” Entering into this opportunity that Washington State afforded me allowed me to make a step in the right direction. And, you know, even if I had not had any other sort of funding, because of my financial condition, I was given a fairly generous FAFSA package. You know, so I could have really loaded up on student debt to the degree that I could, upwards of $40,000 each semester. And initially, the first year, as you might imagine, I was paying out-of-state tuition, which was two-and-a-half, sometimes three times as expensive as in-state.

11:40 José: So, I started that route, especially moving in. But I had knocked on a lot of doors. Especially, I had looked at a different program. At one point I wasn’t sure if they would take me in the School of Education, so I applied for a history program, made good connections there, and the head of that school said, “Look, I know you’re not a student at the College of Arts and Sciences where the program is located, but we have this opportunity here that we’re not sure yet, but it might be able to pay for your tuition.” So, again, just knocking on different doors, calling for informational meetings. That helped me. I had a conversation with Dr. Carmen Lugo, who was the director of the school. And then when the opportunity came up, I did the interviews.

12:30 José: They liked me because you know, it was managing the language labs. I speak different languages. So that helped, and I got that opportunity, and, you know, I was even willing to do it without the tuition reimbursement. And then she pulled through, and then I had tuition covered for that. So, I was making that relationship from afar, but since I got here, I think it also helped the fact that I moved to Washington like three months before school started. So, that also meant that I could be trained to run the laboratory. And then that gave me an edge over perhaps other students that were remote when I was already local and chomping at the bit.

Being Proactive About Financial Needs and Knocking on Doors

13:16 Emily: I think this is a great lesson here for any prospective or current graduate students they can pull out. Now, obviously, you were a non-traditional student, and you had all these advantages from your past career and your past education that, you know, might or might not exist in other people who are listening. But, what you did and what they could do is that you were really proactive about two things. One, letting people know about your financial needs or concerns. Hey, I really want to get tuition covered if I can, would love to receive a stipend. I don’t know if those exactly were the conversations you were having, but I need some funding. Is there any way that I can get that? And as you said, just really knocking on a lot of doors, talking to a lot of different people about what you can offer them, and what you would need from them. And that ended up working out, as you said, with this, is it fair to say it was an assistantship, or like what kind of position?

14:06 José: It was an assistantship. Definitely a graduate assistantship. And to your point, it wasn’t the sign to be offered to graduate students outside of that home school. But because of some, you know, the fact that I was persistent. I was there, they knew me already, just as, you know, just in person having shown up, shaken hands, and done a lot of personal bonding, I was top of mind. And, I think to your point also, the age, being non-traditional. I think there’s an assumption of a certain level of maybe gravitas or just seriousness about the purpose of saying, you know, he’s not going to be, you know, calling in sick much. In fact, never did. So, you know, I think that gave me an edge, but that wasn’t the only pump that I was priming.

15:00 José: I made it a point to be known specifically by the graduate school, precisely by, you know, saying, “Look, this is where I am. Where can I access opportunities? You know, where can I access support?” Whether it’s for clothing for an interview, food security, help with financial aid, help with navigating so many expenses, maybe getting some housing support, energy conservation. So, a lot of things I checked just to, you know, as they say, you know, stretch a buck and make it scream, right? And really, you know, getting people to know who I was, what I needed, and what I was pursuing, especially as far as what my interests were. I always made sure that, you know, I had somebody that I could call on afterwards or would call me.

New Opportunities During COVID

15:52 José: And that actually came into place once the COVID pandemic initially happened, because the whole campus was sent home. And now I was residing on campus, but then my job meant that I, you know, it was a student-facing position, and since there were no students, there was no income. Hence, that position was eliminated during COVID. And that also meant that I had to pivot quickly because it was a program that I thought would carry me throughout my years here. And then there was no funding after the first year. So, having seeded the grounds with other people, I was able to, through the graduate school, find out that there was an opportunity at the Emeritus Society, which is the professors at Washington State University who have retired there have a social group, a support group, and where they come together and they had a position that was vacant to handle their events.

17:01 José: And it was a lot of challenges because it was an older demographic. And this was my second year, so the entire 2021 of the pandemic. So, everything was done remotely, and getting some of these people working on Zoom for the first time in their lives was a work in progress. But they were just such a wonderful experience, and always, and to this day still follow up on what I’m doing. So, I felt very much that it was stressful in the sense that, you know, there was a moment there between March and April of 2020 that I just said, you know, what do I do now? And then, you know, I was able to get that opportunity. And again, because of the fact that I was known on campus and known inside of my department, I had one of my professors who gave me an internship for that summer. And then I transitioned into this assistantship for my second year.

18:05 Emily: Love it. So, now we’ve seen this strategy work for you two times for your first year, and then for your second and third year, it sounded like?

18:11 José: Well, it was for my second year. So, it’s an interesting, again, interesting turn of events because of the fact that I am proactive, like you mentioned, as far as getting myself known and finding out different resources. So, for my third year, I had already accumulated a fair amount of scholarships that I had applied for and won. So, you know, about 18 different support awards from institutions that support recovered individuals like myself that overcame health conditions, to just competitive scholarships, to then even Washington State Employees’ Credit Union, which is my credit union. They have a program that they support their own members. It’s a competitive one, but it’s also one that I applied and won for consecutive years. So, I had a little bit accumulated for there.

19:11 José: And then because of, again, having talked to different people, there was a faculty position that opened up at the College of Business. Mind you, my college is a college of education, okay? But at the College of Business, they had a need to teach finance and entrepreneurship. And one of the people that I had known, one of the professors called me up and said, you know, “Is it okay if I recommend you for this adjunct, you know, position that’s there? I I think you have a rich business administration background and you can make it happen.” And I didn’t need to think twice about it when they <laugh> when they interviewed me, because it’s very unusual that you would find a graduate student also operating at a faculty level, right? That you could be, I was a student working on my dissertation, but I was also teaching and developing something for my profile.

20:06 José: So, I ended up my last year, I could have stayed a second year with the Emeritus Association, but given the fact that I was given such a great opportunity, they even welcomed the fact that, “Hey, you should pursue that.” And then I ended up teaching for two semesters in the business school. That brought in funding, and then I had enough of the scholarship that would pay for my tuition. So, I was able to potentially coast the rest of the way financially. It wasn’t easy, but it was done.

Commercial

20:42 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. If you are a fan of this podcast, I invite you to check out the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. The Community is for PhDs and people pursuing PhDs who want to take charge of their personal finances by opening and funding an IRA, starting to budget, aggressively paying off debt, financially navigating a life or career transition, maximizing the income from a side hustle, preparing an accurate tax return, and much more. Inside the Community, you’ll have access to a library of financial education products, including my recent set of Wealthy PhD Workshops. There is also a discussion forum, monthly live calls with me, and progress journaling for financial goals. Basically, the Community exists to help you reach your financial goals, whatever they are. Go to pfforphds.community to find out more. I can’t wait to help propel you to financial success! Now back to the interview.

High Success Rate with Scholarships

21:48 Emily: I want to pull three elements out from what you just said because I do not want the listeners to miss this. So, one, we talked earlier about you being proactive and knocking on many doors and talking with many people and letting them know what you can do for them and what you need from them. But what you said in there, and what you know, came into play again when the pandemic started, is that you developed these connections before you needed them urgently, right? You said you moved to campus a few months ahead of the other students so that you were a known face and a known entity by the time, Oh, this position is opening up, like that seems like it would be a good fit. They already knew you before the pandemic started. All that work that you had done before, continued to do, when that pivot needed to happen, you had already laid the groundwork and you had the resources in place. So, it’s almost like analogous to having an emergency fund. Like doing this networking for your career before you urgently need it is similar to keeping a cash emergency fund in your finances before you encounter an emergency that you would draw on that for. So, that’s point number one. Point number two, you said you won 18 scholarships. How many did you apply for <laugh>, do you know, to get those 18?

22:58 José: Well, I have a pretty good success rate on those. And again, I mean, you know how time is of the essence when you are a graduate student. So, I had to screen a lot of them and then make sure that, at least on paper, I had an above-average chance, you know. Just based whether, I didn’t apply for everything that was out there. Some of those came as direct referrals from the graduates school here at the WSU. So, they were internal competitions that you applied for, especially the teaching awards. So, meaning that there were scholarships available for students who were looking to expand pedagogy and become better classroom teachers. So, a lot of those came in through the internal graduate school at Washington State University.

23:50 José: But the external ones, I would say that, I just don’t want to create the wrong expectation. I probably ended up applying to about 25. So, I got to most of them because I would do the pre-screening, and I didn’t want to be wasting a lot of time either writing big essays for small dollars. So, there was also, my sweet spot was maybe focusing on ones that were between $2,500 and $5,000, because that made it meaningful. A lot of those, the money can only be used for school-related expenses. So, it’s not like you can take it out and, you know, have a party. So, that’s why you can see that that served as my nest for my last year, where even though the faculty position didn’t pay for tuition, I had enough money accumulated that did that. And then I just had to worry about my day-to-day expenses, which I did just based on the income that I received, whether assistantship or teaching. And I also did a little bit of thrift shopping on the side just to kind of like buy cheap and try to sell. That’s where the spending money came from.

25:02 Emily: Well, I’m so happy to hear that you were so strategic about those scholarship selections and the applications, and I feel like we could do an entire other interview about that strategy. Because it obviously worked out so well for you and you were, you know, judicious about how you used your time. And I just love everything you mentioned. So, that was a value-packed, you know, response there that I didn’t want the listeners to miss. And then the third point that I wanted to pull out was that you, you know, you’ve had now from what you described, two assistantships or the faculty position, non-assistantship. One assistantship, another faculty position that were not within your own school of education. And I just don’t want the listeners to have like a limiting belief around who on campus might or might not be able and willing to hire them based on these bureaucratic boundaries that may exist. So, I love your example of how you were able to, you know, cross those boundaries again because of the work you did earlier, getting known by all these people. So, I just wanted listeners to have that as well.

Learning About Financial Resources Early On

25:58 Emily: Is there anything else that you want to add about, you know, how you managed financially during the PhD? We’ve already gotten a few different details, but anything more?

26:10 José: Well, I think one of the more important things, which actually, you know, I met you, or started following your advice even before I had gotten accepted to graduate school. So, I think the importance of obtaining information so that you know what’s realistic, what’s out there, you know, what services, you know, at least populating yourself with enough information with the resources that you provide. When I was having discussions with the graduate school, and I would encourage everybody to just, regardless of where they go, I think their first stop should be the graduate school, just because they have a direct connection with you. They know where different opportunities are. They can show you, as they did, “Look, you know, there’s this whole list of information that if you fill out just a standard application, we’re going to put you in the lot to win or be eligible for some of these awards.”

27:14 José: So, it’s something that you just need to show up and do it, you know? And it’s there. So, I can’t imagine that being the process in every single school, but they’re there. They’re there for you. So, the fact that they, you know, I was able to go there and I had enough information based on your podcast, based on your personal opinions, that I could go and say, “Look, you know, this is what I need and I’ve already done my, you know, four-year span. These are kind of like the expenses that I’m seeing, you know, can I get some support here? Can I get some support there?” And even if they say no, it’s still you’re learning through this process and you know where the other resources are. And I find people want to help you.

27:56 José: They want to help you if you’re willing to put in the effort. And, you know, so I would just encourage people to do that. Even with your research, when you’re at WSU, the fact that I was in the multidisciplinary research allowed me to qualify to other experiences including summer internships. I did a summer internship with a first-gen-focused institution in Nashville. And that wasn’t necessarily initially my focus, because my focus was mostly on using technology to help individuals with disabilities. But I pivoted into first-gens because of that experience. And that gave me not only contacts in that industry, but also an opportunity of being able to do field research that then became the basis of my doctoral dissertation here at Washington State.

28:47 Emily: So amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that message. It actually is a reflection of something I heard back in the interview I did specifically for international students. A very similar message to them, which was get to know your designated school official, like we were talking about earlier, before you run into a financial crisis that of course, international students have many more restrictions on how they can earn money and whether they can take out student loans and all these issues. But get to know the people who know the resources, have access to the resources in advance, so that when, you know, if you see a crisis approaching or like you, your income source dried up, then you know who you can go to. They already aware of you. Maybe they’ve been keeping an eye out for opportunities for you. So, incredible message.

Completing the PhD Without Taking on Student Debt

29:28 Emily: I understand that you ultimately were able to complete your PhD without taking on any student debt from all of the, you know, avenues of funding that we talked about. Can you tell me about what that means to you to have been able to accomplish that?

29:44 José: Well, it was you know, I’m still a little bit giggly about that because it wasn’t the case. I mean, when I first came here, and mind you, I landed in Pullman, Washington. I actually drove here in April of 2019. And I was perfectly, not perfectly I should say that, but at least I was resigned that this might put me in a hole for at least a hundred thousand dollars. Just in the way that I had nothing written down. I had nothing committed. You know, and it was, it was very humbling saying, “Okay, I’m going to start dipping into these FAFSA funds because I just don’t have any income. And I did that for the first six weeks, and then, you know, things started coming along and then I was able to contain that initial debt. I never really added to it, carried it and then, you know, then got some scholarship funding that allowed me not only to start paying down on it, but then eventually, you know, with my stipend, being able to wipe it clean.

30:53 José: And I know there’s some who say, “Oh, if you had left it there, you probably would’ve eliminated now with some of the Washington DC funding.” But it’s okay. I mean, I think now I don’t have it. I feel much stronger. My credit score is probably almost 70 basis points higher than when I began the program. Precise, because I was not only able to keep those expenses down, but also pay down on expenses or debt that I carried from my past. And again, I’m just very grateful to you and some of the people that you’ve introduced me through your program and your podcast, including your brother as far as support that I receive to make sure that I’m lining myself up for eventual homeownership opportunities, now that I’m facing a future where I have finally some steady income, a new career, and just life outside of campus.

31:53 Emily: I’m so happy to hear that. I’m so pleased. You’re giving me a lot of credit here. But I think it was a lot. I mean, we had one conversation, but it’s a lot of the podcasts and other things that I’ve put out there. So, I’m so pleased that you’ve been using that, and I wasn’t even necessarily aware of that the whole time. One note, this is not necessarily advice for you, but for anybody who is listening at this point. This is going to come out in fall 2022. If you paid down federal student loan debt during the pandemic, which it sounds like you did, José, you can actually request a refund from your loan servicer up to the 10 or $20,000 of forgiveness that we are expecting to come through this fall. And so, if you want to do that, you could actually get that refund and then get the debt wiped away. So whatever that amount is, maybe it’s $10,000, you could actually have that in your pocket if you wanted to go ahead and do that. Not necessarily saying you have to, because I know there’s a lot of pleasure you receive from, you know, having not only paid off that student loan debt that you took at the beginning, but it sounds like you also paid down some of your other debt, which is incredible. But I just want the listeners to know that opportunity is there if they did pay off debt during the pandemic.

32:59 José: Well, thank you. I’ll be paying close attention to that upcoming podcast for sure. That may be, it’ll be an early celebration of Christmas.

Next Steps in Career and in Finances

33:08 Emily: Yeah, that sounds great. Okay. Second to last question here. What is next for you in your career and in your finances?

33:15 José: Well, I think as I indicated earlier, a lot of my journey, especially in these past few years where I’ve had to rely upon, because of the fact that I was not financially independent, I had to rely upon other people for support and show them, right? That I was worthy of the trust, and in some cases, that I was worthy of the positions that they had given me. I have an obligation now to pass forward some of those benefits that I received. And I say that because then I was originally catering or focusing in on getting into classrooms. And my focus was to go into kind of like the greater Appalachian region of the United States, which there’s a lot of financial need, there’s a lot of mentoring need for, you know, just really wonderful individuals who just don’t have the support at home and guidance to be able to know what college is all about.

34:19 José: And then they’re at risk, even if they get accepted, of not fitting in and then dropping out. So, I can make an impact in their lives. So, I was heading in that direction. And then I got a call from a non-profit that I worked with in the past that wanted me to see if I could stay behind in Washington State to help the lower-income agricultural communities in Washington State. There’s a lot of mostly Hispanic and Native American communities in the greater Yakima Valley. That allows me an opportunity of combining both my educational focus as well as my business administration to help those communities in terms of obtaining funding for school, of obtaining funding to start off their own businesses, of navigating some of their citizenship limitations. And it also allows me to stay close to, I have two daughters, one actually who was Natalia, my oldest who graduated here, I was able to graduate simultaneously with her, so that that was an extra benefit of coming to Washington State.

35:27 José: And in fact, we both walked together in May. She’s now living in Seattle. I have my youngest that lives at home with her mom in Vancouver. So, me being able to stay here in Washington State a couple of years and working where there’s a need for not only role models, but hard skills in financial and agricultural businesses. I can make an impact in a lot of financial ways and also personally meaningful ways, and still maintain contact with the important people in my life.

36:02 Emily: I’m so pleased. That’s so wonderful. I’m so glad you got that opportunity to stay there in Washington and do that mission-driven work. So happy!

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

36:11 Emily: Okay, last question for you. What is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And that could be something that we have already touched on in this interview, or it could be something completely new.

36:22 José: Well, I think again, you and I both share the perspective of knowing what it’s like to be in the hole, shall we say. And I think that that might be more meaningful, you know, to focus in on that because it’s such a threatening time and humbling time you know. Because you can think everything you want about your accomplishments and what you’re doing, but you’re still faced with the reality of how do you make ends meet and how do you survive. So, I think still for those of you who are looking, contemplating this journey, or in the middle of this journey, I think some of the things that you talked about before. Don’t be putting any sort of unnecessary limitations of your ability of being able to prosper. And don’t look at it as like I don’t want to get known around as somebody who’s in need.

37:20 José: Or you know, I don’t want to necessarily show the fact that I’m, you know, in financial need. I don’t think people will judge you for that. I think if anything, they see you more as somebody that is very responsible, is not letting the worst-case scenario happen. You’re trying to be proactive about it, and people will support you. I’m telling you, I mean, in my setting here, it’s seen as like, ‘Wow, you’re hungry, and you want to tackle this on and not let that get out of hand for different reasons.” People will find a way of helping you, but you’ve got to show up and you’ve got to do the work. They’re not going to give you a handout, because that’s just not, well, that’s just not necessarily the type of image that you want to command.

38:06 José: So, I will go back to what you were alluding to. Just knock on different doors. Don’t be afraid when they say no, it’s not a rejection necessarily. It’s just more of an issue of prioritization and saying, well, maybe it’s not the door that you need to do, but at least you leave a good presence so that in the future if something were to come up, they do call you. And I’ve seen that happen in my case, right? So, I would also say that you also want to make sure that you craft a very good message so that when people meet you, they not only remember who you are, but they want to know what you’re passionate about and how you’re helping yourself and others in that. Because then they make the connection and say, “Oh, wait a second, Emily likes to promote advance in higher education and she’s got this network. We just got this grant. Let’s call her.” So you’re ready, they immediately connect as opposed to saying, “Well, he’s just, or José’s just a student in need.” You want to make sure that they have some memorable talk points about what it is that you’re pursuing, your research, your career focus, the communities that you want to help out with.

39:20 Emily: That’s such a perfect encapsulation of like the main messages that we’ve gotten through this interview. I’m so happy to hear that like last articulation. And to put it kind of with some of my own words there, you demonstrated and what you’re encouraging other people to demonstrate, is resourcefulness. And the university does have a lot of resources, <laugh>, and they may be, you know, in different little pockets and they may be unknown. And you have to go around and talk with people and network and, as you said, let them know what you can do for them and what you bring to the table. I noticed this pattern also when I’ve spoken about negotiation of graduate student stipends. And like, in a way, what you were doing was negotiation, except they didn’t even know that they were making you an offer yet, right?

40:00 Emily: Like you were just out there trying to get those offers. What I noticed when I talk with graduate students about negotiation is that they usually do open up very vulnerably about their finances. This is the need. Hey, this is the cost of living going on. I really don’t think that this offer was sufficient to meet this cost of living. And also in some cases, oh, look what I’m bringing to the table. Okay, I’m bringing in a fellowship, I’m bringing outside money. I’m bringing in your case, a whole career, you know, a first career’s worth of work experience, graduate degrees, insights. So yeah, as you said, just leave a good impression, like let them know what you’re about and what you need. And in the future, belaying those seeds and in the future they may be able to come back to you with some kind of offer. And your case, it’s worked out over and over and over again. And I’m so glad that we captured that story in this interview. José, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been a pleasure to have you.

40:48 José: Well, I’m very blessed to be here, Emily. And I thank you for four years of putting up with me and such wonderful advice. And I’m just glad that, you know, I’m able to demonstrate what you do when you put into effect the guidance that you’ve shared with us remotely and in my case remotely and in person.

41:10 Emily: Thank you!

Outtro

41:16 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? My team has collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Advocate for Financial Policy Change on Your Campus

March 28, 2022 by Meryem Ok 1 Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Tyler Hallmark, a recent PhD in Higher Education and Student Affairs and a low-income, first-generation college student. Emily and Tyler and discuss the why, what, and how of advocating for improving university policies that relate to finances and benefits. They cover the timing of fellowship disbursements and assistantship paychecks vs. fee due dates, emergency aid funds, reimbursements, prohibitions on outside work, and more. If you want to raise an issue that they skipped, please leave a comment in the show notes, email them, or start a conversation on social media.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • Tyler’s Twitter (@Hallmark2032)
  • Tyler’s Website
  • Tax Cheat Sheet
  • Dear Grad Student (Podcast) Episode 27
  • Tyler’s article in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
  • PF for PhDs S6E15: How This Entering PhD Student Has Set Himself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School (Money Story with George Walters-Marrah)
  • PF for PhDs S7E4: This PhD’s Message for University Housing Is “Work with Us, Not Against Us” (Money Story with Dr. Travis Seifman)
  • PF for PhDs S2E1: As a Single Parent, This Graduate Student Utilizes Every Possible Resource (Money Story with Lauri Lutes) 
  • PF for PhDs S8E11: University Policies to Better Support Grad Student Parents (Money Story with Dr. Alaina Talboy)
  • PF for PhDs S1E3: Serving as a Resident Advisor Freed this Graduate Student from Financial Stress (Money Story by Adrian Gallo)
  • PF for PhDs S10E8: This Grad Student Eliminated Her Housing Expense to Pay Off Her Student Loans (Money Story with Dr. Erika Moore Taylor) 
  • PF for PhDs S11E1: This Grad Student’s Defensive Financial Planning Paid Off During the Pandemic (Money Story with Maya Gosztyla) 
  • PF for PhDs Tax Resources
  • PF for PhDs Subscribe to Mailing List 
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
Image for How to Advocate for Financial Policy Change on Your Campus

Teaser

00:00 Tyler: You don’t have to wait for a union to form. You could be the one that is forming it. I did this often informally, you know, I never thought to call us a union, but I would just share my experiences vulnerably with my peers. And they would share theirs with me. And we would come together and we would go approach the chair of our department or, you know, someone that does have power in our school and say, Hey, we’re having this issue. There are multiple of us. Is there anything we could do?

Introduction

00:32 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 7, and today my guest is Dr. Tyler Hallmark, a recent PhD in Higher Education and Student Affairs and a low-income, first-generation college student. Tyler and I discuss the why, what, and how of advocating for improving university policies that relate to finances and benefits. We cover the timing of fellowship disbursements and assistantship paychecks vs. fee due dates, emergency aid funds, reimbursements, prohibitions on outside work, and more. Tyler is quite knowledgeable and experienced in advocacy and shares his story with us vulnerably. I’m confident that our discussion of policies and hearing about Tyler’s approach to advocacy at the end will help enhance your own advocacy efforts on your campus. If you want to raise an issue that we skipped, please leave a comment in the show notes, email us, or start a conversation on social media.

01:42 Emily: April 18th is fast approaching, so in case you haven’t started working on your tax return yet, I wanted to point you to my #1 most popular free downloadable. It’s my tax cheat sheet for graduate students who are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and residents for tax purposes. You can find it at PFforPhDs.com/student-tax-sheet/. The cheat sheet briefly explains my framework for the categories of higher education income, the three higher education tax benefits that might be available to you, and why students who were age 23 or younger at the end of 2021 need to be extra cautious. Better yet, once you sign up for my mailing list to download the cheat sheet, you’ll receive a free email course explaining in-depth all these concepts and more. Again, you can download the cheat sheet from PFforPhDs.com/student-tax-sheet/. Please share that link with your peers as well! Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Tyler Hallmark.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

02:59 Emily: I am delighted to have joining me on the podcast today, Dr. Tyler Hallmark. I first met Tyler actually on an episode of Dear Grad Student. We were both featured by Alana on episode 27. And we talked about kind of, you know, high-level issues related to being a graduate student, advocacy topics. And I just really enjoyed that conversation so much, I wanted to invite Tyler on this podcast to dive even more deeply into that topic. So, Tyler, it’s absolutely a delight to speak with you again. And would you please introduce yourself to the audience?

03:27 Tyler: Yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Tyler Hallmark and my pronouns are he/him. I am presently working as a program associate in the higher education program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation here in New York City. Before I came here, I was actually finishing my PhD at the Ohio State University in higher education and student affairs. And so, a lot of my background while I was there was focusing on low-income students, first-generation students, students of color, and their journey through higher education and how we can really make the systems more equitable and more supportive for students like myself that has gone through this as someone who is from a low-income household, who was the first in their family to go to college and who is also Cherokee. And so, you know, I’ve written a lot about my experiences. I’ve written for Diverse, I’ve written for the Chronicle of Higher Education, these different outlets, really, sharing some of the backgrounds, some the challenges I faced, and trying to really shift policy, shift practices, on our college campuses for students like myself.

The Importance of Advocacy in Higher Ed

04:36 Emily: Yeah. And we’re partially basing this interview off an article that Tyler sent me in advance, so we’ll link that from the show notes if you want to get even more of his perspective on these issues. So, you know, beyond just what you explained about your own background and about your work with first-gen and low-income students, students of color, and so forth. Are there any other reasons why you think it’s important to advocate for yourself or other graduate students in higher ed?

05:00 Tyler: Well, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s always important as I was going through, I think, you know, students from backgrounds like myself already have so many barriers to face going to college, having to, you know, learn the whole admissions process, having to learn how to, you know, really make it, how to learn study habits. I didn’t really know have good study habits until I just kind of, you know, picked them up as I was going through college. And so, you know, with all those barriers already in mind, there are so many barriers that are just unnecessary that we’re facing as we’re going through college and, you know, it’s really making a big impact on whether we even complete the degrees we set out to and reach the goals we have for ourselves. So, I always try to share my own experiences and be vulnerable with people, not only just to hopefully shift the policy or practice to make it easier on my college journey, but because I know there are so many students coming after me, and I know if I don’t speak up now, then no one’s going to speak up for me. So, that’s what ultimately got me into doing this kind of work.

06:00 Emily: And I think I’ll add to that as well, like of course it’s a necessary and beautiful goal to make higher education more accessible to more people. Everyone benefits from that. But I was also thinking about this idea of like, we do it this way because this is the way it’s always been done. Or like, I had this experience in my PhD program, so that means that you’re going to have to put up with this too, and how like damaging that is and how unnecessary it is. And so, you know, as we have gone through the, you know, decades of graduate students, like we’ve learned some things that maybe don’t need to be the way they are. And I think part of the purpose of me doing this episode is to try to, you know, with your perspective as well, share what policies maybe are being tried out at some places that could be tried at other places.

Earlier Distribution of Financial Aid

06:43 Emily: Like maybe there aren’t as many barriers to changing these policies, as you know, you might assume. So that’s kind of the impetus behind the conversation. So, let’s talk specifically about what are some of these policies that you think, that I think could be changed, should be changed, that we see kind of in many places across higher education. So, I have a list in front of me and we’re just going to bang, bang, bang, go through this list. Again, partially based on this article that you wrote. So, first of all, one of the things we talked about on the Dear Grad Student podcast was earlier distribution of financial aid. Can you tell me more about that issue and how it can change?

07:17 Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. So, as you’ll see in the article that you mentioned, I talk about my experience. As a grad student, I would go into the financial aid office, and one semester, I was going to miss my rent. I didn’t have any money, and they were not going to release the funds until two weeks after classes had started, well after my rent was due. And I went into a financial aid counselor and I was like, Hey, is there any way I can get my financial aid easier? My scholarship had already sent the money to my institution, but my institution just wasn’t releasing it to my bank account until after classes started. And the financial aid advisor basically just said, well, I don’t know why you don’t have money saved up. I don’t know why you are in this predicament. You should just learn to manage your money better.

08:03 Tyler: And I was really taken aback because I didn’t have any money to manage. So you’re just really expecting me to already have the savings account and all this kind of stuff. And I didn’t have any of that. And so, what I’ve been pushing for is for institutions to really release the financial aid before the semester starts. You know, I can’t afford to wait to move until, you know, after classes start. So, you know, federal guidelines say you can release it 10 to 14 days before classes start, even loans, federal loans and that kind of stuff. And so, I’m really pushing for an earlier financial aid distribution on that regard, or in the cases that institutions can’t move the whole distribution up, at least allowing students to take an advance on financial aid. And some institutions, like my first institution I attended, actually let me take out up to $1,500, which was enough to cover me for one month of rent. However, a later institution I attended would only let me have like a $400 advance, which wasn’t nearly enough to make my rent.

09:06 Emily: It’s a little bit rich, right? Coming from this financial aid officer, whoever you’re talking to to be like, “Um, yeah, we’re going to hold your money hostage for like an extra month here. But like it’s really on you. This is your problem.” As you said, the federal guidelines allow that earlier distribution. So like why wouldn’t the universities, as you said, at least release part of it? And specifically maybe for your situation or how this works in general, when you’re talking about financial aid, I think you’re speaking about a scholarship, right? So like awarded income that, you know, had been sent to the university for you, and it was just basically giving you access to that money earlier.

Detrimental Effects of Lack of Early Access to Your Own Funding

09:40 Tyler: And a lot of this falls back to also institutions doing enrollment checks. So, you know, it’s mandated that professors and faculty report attendance to their classes. And so the financial aid office will often wait until they get those attendance records before they let students have any money to make sure they’re showing up. But I think that’s a detriment because especially, I’m in grad school. I know I often showed up to class and I didn’t have my books on the first day of class. And I had a professor saying, you’re a PhD student. How do you not have your books already? You should have learned this, you know, years ago. And I’d say, well, I’m a PhD student, but I’m still poor. I still can’t afford, you know, to get my books before classes start, unless they give me my financial aid.

10:26 Emily: Yeah. I think this is so relatable to anybody who’s been through that transition to graduate school. I mean, at least they can imagine like the difficulties in that. Like, I think back to my own move to graduate school, and like, oh wow. Now I realize how fortunate that was. Because for example, I didn’t have to move very far. Like I didn’t have to buy a plane ticket. I already had a car. So like, it was just like, okay, I’m going to pack up my possessions and go. And actually the apartment that I got into did like a student, like thing where you didn’t have to put down a deposit. So it was like all kind of set up to be like, okay. And I did have little bit of savings from the previous job that I had. So it was like, looking back on that it’s like, it went okay for me, but I can so easily see how it could be really, really difficult if you don’t have some of the things that I just mentioned already in place or like more challenges there.

11:10 Emily: Another sort of way to get at this problem is for PhD programs, in particular, to provide something like an extra bit of money, a moving bonus, a top-up fellowship, something that is specifically sort of earmarked to help students move to that institution. Because as we know, probably most great majority of PhD students are moving some distance to get to their new programs. Now, I’ve seen, like I’ve had heard reports of people telling me that their offers included this kind of thing, $500, a thousand dollars. We talked about this, for example, in the episode with George Walters-Marrah, which I’ll link to in the show notes. It was a $500 moving bonus that helped him decide between his number one and number two choice of PhD programs. Like that was kind of the final clincher was getting that offer. But I understand that you have talked about this with many people before as well, and you’ve been hearing some different things.

12:02 Tyler: Yeah. So first off, I will say I’m a big advocate for applying moving bonuses for students, especially those grad students trying to move to college that often have to go across state lines to find a graduate program that matches their needs. They have to leave home. So, a big advocate for that. And I’ve been talking about that a lot, you know, you’ll see me post about it on Twitter and those kinds of things and my own experiences showing up to college and going $5,000 in debt because I had to move across the country. But then I also had a lot of responses from, you know, deans and administration that read my work and they’ll say, Hey, we looked into doing this moving bonus thing, but it’s just not feasible. Like it’s not possible for us, we’re facing different, you know, barriers to policy that just won’t let us distribute those kinds of bonuses to students. And so I’m not, you know, super familiar with what policies are in place and if those are federal or state or how that’s working there. But I do know some institutions run into trouble when they do try to look into that.

13:02 Emily: Yeah. So this is a little bit of an open question. And maybe it does vary by state. Maybe it varies, you know, public versus private institutions. But I am glad that people, at least administrators, are at least looking into it, at least making the effort. But in places where it is possible, it is a great, great, great, incentive to help with that, as we were just talking about, that early financial crunch that everyone’s going through just to get to school. So thanks for sharing that. I hope that they keep kind of chipping away at whatever these barriers are that they’re seeing.

Benefits of Pro-Rating

13:31 Emily: Okay, another issue that I’ve had people actually on the podcast mention to me before is about the student fees that often have to be paid like really soon before the start of the semester, that can happen, or very soon into the semester. And I know for me, for example, one of the fees that I paid, it wasn’t even necessarily a required one, but I mentioned I have a car, so I paid like a parking permit fee once per year. So I paid that, you know, in one lump sum, it actually changed like how I even budget to like, be able to handle that kind of once per year expense. But I heard from some other people at other institutions that their fees and things like parking permits were prorated like per paycheck. And I thought that was such a smart idea to like spread out that payment throughout the year. Is this an issue you’ve thought about all?

14:16 Tyler: You know, I really like the idea of pro-rating. I think you run into trouble with that when you look at scholarships because you have to pay in a lump sum then. You know, when I was on my PhD, I relied on scholarships and fellowships less so than an actual job and paycheck. So I didn’t face that directly. I will say some of the things I faced, and I would often ask for, and a lot of students don’t know to even go ask for this, was these places that often require fees upfront, you can often ask for them to push that fee back. So for instance, when I would enroll for my fall courses, they would say, well, a certain amount of fees are due in May before, you know, three months away. And I was able to always petition for that and they would say, okay, we can wait until your scholarship comes in in August or September and pay it then. And so just institutions could make that more clear that students can actually ask for that. And on the student side, you should just know that that’s often an option. I’ve done that at multiple institutions so far in that regard.

15:20 Emily: Yeah. I think the basic point here is just like, let’s time the payment of fees along with when the student actually has money to pay. So if it is a monthly or whatever, kind of paycheck, let’s pay the fees with every paycheck instead of, you know, upfront all at once. Or if you’re receiving these like larger scholarship or fellowship distributions, yeah, as you just said, like let’s coincide the date of the fee needing to be paid with that disbursement because that’s when the money is available. So logical. Love it. Thank you so much for, you know, pointing out that you’ve been successful in having that exception made for you.

Emergency Aid Funds

15:52 Emily: Let’s talk about emergency aid funds now, and I’ve actually heard this in two forms, both grants and loans. I don’t know which one you have been talking about the most. But there are sometimes emergency funds available to graduate students. So, can you tell me a little bit more about this issue?

16:08 Tyler: Yeah. So, we see a lot of this coming up, especially over the pandemic. I see a lot of federal funding that is going to institutions during this time. Institutions are then turning that into an emergency aid fund. Of course, I’ve seen a wide variety of funds. Like you mentioned, there’s a loan and the actual grant money that you can just keep and not have to pay back. But also there are some that require different amounts of paperwork in different red tape to even receive. So, you know, some will actually require, and they won’t process it for a week, whereas some will process it within two days in a senior student account and those kinds of things. So, the thing I mainly advocate for is to even have these funds set up, but also have them as easy as possible for students to access.

16:55 Tyler: And the final note I will say is that too often institutions gear these towards undergraduates only. And they don’t even write that. I had one institution where I was struggling and I was going to apply for this emergency grant funding. I actually had a financial aid counselor tell me to apply for it. And after I applied, they emailed me back and said, well, you’re a graduate student. This is for undergraduates only. And even the financial aid counselor wasn’t aware that it was for graduate students only. So, making that clear around those and really targeting it towards all students on your campus and not only certain populations.

17:28 Emily: Definitely. I attended a conference in 2019, the Higher Education Financial Wellness Association’s annual conference. And I remember these like emergency aid, you know, grant and loans programs being a big topic of conversation at that time. More and more universities were implementing them. And so I think, you know, the suggestion here is just yes, more please, and also to more populations of students, please. And Hey, also postdocs. Don’t want to leave out the postdocs here. They have financial stress as well.

17:54 Tyler: Totally. Especially when you think about that it’s often these graduate students and postdocs that are more likely to have families. So they’re more likely to run into these kinds of emergency situations in different regards.

Food Pantries and Subsidized Housing

18:06 Emily: Similarly, another topic of conversation that I heard at that conference was about food pantries and food banks being set up at universities and how they were implementing those programs. Can you tell me about your experience and advocacy around these?

18:19 Tyler: Yeah, certainly. Again, this goes back to having a wide variety of what these food banks look like. The one thing I really advocate for these is really having them in a place where students hang out. You know, when I was at the University of Pennsylvania, we actually had this great intercultural center where students would just come and study, hang out with their friends, have movie nights. And there was a food pantry that was just open. There wasn’t anyone that you had to sign in and get the food. You could just walk in and take the food as you needed it. And you know, a lot of students that are often facing this food insecurity, um, are often, you know, afraid of the shame that comes with it. Afraid of someone seeing that they need help. And so having these, just being open and easy to access for students, I think that’s the best way to really go about setting up a food pantry instead of hiding it, you know, in a basement on campus or somewhere that students don’t even know where to look.

19:09 Emily: Yeah. Or putting up any like red tape or anything like that. I mean, of course they want to know how much it’s being used. But you could just do an inventory to figure that out. Great, great. Another issue that I wanted to raise is something that I’ve talked about in many of my other podcast episodes, which is offering subsidized housing in high cost-of-living areas. This happens sometimes, although we’ve had sort of questions about it on the podcast, whether it’s all it’s cracked up to be. And I’ll link to some of those previous episodes in the show notes, but then also subsidized childcare. And this is something that’s come up in two of my episodes, specifically with grad student parents. Are there any comments that you’d like to make around these issues of being able to subsidize, you know, these big, big expenses for students who need it the most?

19:56 Tyler: Yeah. The one thing I’ll add here is just when we’re thinking about housing on campuses, I know one of my grad schools, the reason I even chose it was because they actually offered a form of graduate student living that was free. I mean, I had to work for the university in their housing department, but they offered me housing. And that just made it all the more possible for me to live it in an expensive city. And so, I think even thinking about jobs and where we could provide, you know, if students do want to take on that extra job, mine was like a 15 to 20-hour job a week and I was able to get free housing for it. So it paid off for me. And that really helped me afford my master’s degree.

20:36 Emily: Absolutely. That’s something that we’ve talked about, really featured, that kind of strategy of serving as a resident advisor in two previous episodes, one with Adrian Gallo and one with Dr. Erika Moore Taylor. So check out those episodes in the show notes if you want to learn more about that. And it is a job, I know, you know because you did it, but it’s absolutely a job. It’s absolutely a part-time job. So we can’t trivialize that, but it can be very, very valuable, you know, to your bottom line, as a graduate student. I guess the other point that I want to make about these, you know, subsidized, um, resources is that they’re always too scarce. And so I think when you’re making a decision about where to attend graduate school and having, you know, the possibility of being in subsidized housing or the possibility of obtaining subsidized childcare is something that you need to have to make the finances work in that particular place.

21:21 Emily: You, you have to be so in-depth about what is the process of getting into this? How long can I have access to it for? So, for example, just recently, it was season 11 episode one, published an interview with Maya Gosztyla who was living in subsidized graduate housing at UCSD. And because she had started it, I think a couple of years ago, she had this like locked-in rent, but rent was being increased for like new people coming onto leases massively. It was like a, I don’t know, a 60% increase or something huge like that. And so, you know, these things can happen. So like you just have to really kind of understand the way the winds are blowing on campuses in terms of how much is being put behind these resources. And if you need it, you need to make sure you’re going to have access to it.

22:07 Emily: I know that childcare is always, always too scarce. I do recommend the episode I did with Lauri Lutes, if you already have a child or are planning on having a child going into graduate school. She was very intentional about choosing which graduate program would be the most supportive to her in her childcare needs and ended up at Oregon State University in terms of what she had to choose among. And they did things like for example, have free childcare, like sort of like afterschool care on campus, up to like four hours a day, completely free for students. So having it on campus and having it as like that part-time flexible option in addition to full-time, you know, daycare or something, that was vital for her, like making her finances in graduate school work.

Commercial

22:53 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude! Taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2021 tax return, which are available at PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I hope you will check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the material or have a question for me, please join one of my tax workshops, which are linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I offer one workshop on preparing your annual tax return for graduate students and one workshop on calculating your quarterly estimated tax for fellowship and training grant recipients.

23:57 Emily: There are two remaining live Q&A calls for the annual tax return workshop, How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), which are scheduled for Monday, April 4th and Sunday, April 10th. For fellowship and training grant recipients, please be aware that the deadline to make your quarter 1 2022 payment, if applicable, is April 18th, the same day as your 2021 tax return is due. The 2022 quarter one live Q&A call for my estimated tax workshop, Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients, is scheduled for Thursday, April 14th. It would be my pleasure to help you save time and potentially money this tax season. So don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Reimbursement Timelines

24:47 Emily: Another issue you brought up in your article was something that every grad student complains about, which is reimbursements after you, you know, outlay funds for conferences or for equipment or travel or other things. Talk to me about that reimbursement timeline issue.

25:02 Tyler: Yeah, definitely. So I think, you know, there’s this dangerous assumption we have probably in society broadly, but especially I’ve seen it in higher education is that students have the money to pay for things up front and rely on a reimbursement that can come sometimes months later, months down the line. And I think that’s really particularly concerning when we think about this professional development and how important professional development is. And even though we’re setting aside funds for students, we often expect them to pay for the conference, the hotel, the travel, everything up front, and then rely on this reimbursement that can often have a lot of red tape that, you know, students can often not be sure if they’re even going to get it back. Or even when they apply for reimbursement funds, they might not hear back until a week before the conference when flights and hotels are already super expensive. So having reimbursement not only, perhaps think about giving that money upfront, having to pay an advanced setup, but also thinking about when we approve students for it and how fast we can approve for that, that they’re going to certainly get these kinds of funds going forward. I think those are some things to really think about here.

26:14 Emily: Yeah. Pay in advance would be ideal. And if not, get that reimbursement back to them as quickly as possible. Even before the event occurs, like you said, the timing of buying flights and so forth, like you can buy these things months in advance. The conference registration fees also can be really high paid months in advance. So like, can we just reimburse them right when they have the expense, you know, one, two weeks later or do we actually really have to wait until after the event occurs? Hopefully not. And like you said, you know, there is the assumption in these systems that students have access to cash, which as we know is usually not the case. And most graduate students, I would say, put these kinds of expenses on credit cards. And then even if the reimbursement does come through, we all hope it does, then they have those months of interest that they’ve paid on, you know, hundreds over a thousand dollars worth of these kinds of expenses. And so that’s like a lot of financial damage that happens in response to this, you know, kind of system. So totally agree with you. I know everyone’s on board with that topic, right? How do we improve this reimbursement system or eliminate it?

27:13 Tyler: Absolutely. One thing I’ll also add there is, we’re assuming all students have access to credit, but I’ve actually had many students, you know, going through my career that were perhaps international students that had just gotten over here and they didn’t have an American credit line, you know, and that kind of access. So they didn’t even have a credit card to put this money on. They really had to dig into their bank account if they ever wanted to participate in these kinds of things.

Prohibitions on Outside Work as a Grad Student

27:37 Emily: Such a good point. Also my assumption. Access to cash, also assuming access to credit. Great, great point. Thank you. Another issue that I wanted to throw in here is about prohibitions against outside work as a graduate student. And tell me about your experience. I think you at least went to a couple different institutions for graduate school. Did they have any explicit prohibitions against outside work?

27:58 Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. It was actually my first year in my PhD. I received a fellowship, and in that fellowship contract, they explicitly stated that I couldn’t take any jobs. That the whole purpose of the fellowship was to fund me so that I, you know, could focus on my studies. And while I understood that it was well-intentioned, still, I had a lot of time. First year was actually the least busy year of my PhD. So that was the one year I did want to have an extra job and try to pay off some of the debt I had, pay off those moving expenses that we mentioned, and really set myself up so I could focus more on my studies in my second, third, etc. years down the road. But that first year, because I had a fellowship, they actually made me sign a contract that I wouldn’t take any other job, whether that was with the institution or outside of it.

28:47 Emily: And I totally understand your impetus for like wanting to clear up, you know, past debts. And as you said, set yourself up for having a good, you know, subsequent second, third, and fourth years. Did you feel like that fellowship was sufficient had you not had those goals? Like if it were just paying for living expenses? Or was it like already outrageous that they were thinking that was enough?

29:08 Tyler: Actually, the fellowship is like the, at that institution, is like the one thing that pays well. So, it was actually enough for me to live on. It was fine there. But to set myself up to pay these rents before, you know, the semester begins and set myself up for those kinds of money management they expect from me and the financial aid office, it wasn’t enough for that. It was just enough to cover me on a monthly basis.

29:33 Emily: It is, I think at a minimum, a great idea for a fellowship to sufficiently support a graduate student. But as we were just talking about assumptions, the assumption there is that every graduate student has the same financial needs and the same financial responsibilities. You had a different situation maybe than one of your peers and you wanted to have that outside income. My kind of stance on this is, the university should stay out of your time, the business of your time, aside from, you know, what you are devoting to your studies. So if that’s going to be whatever you decide it is, but as long as the student is making sufficient progress towards the degree, I don’t think that university, whatever, anyone in your department, your advisor should have any restrictions on what you do with the rest of your time. After all, we were just talking about people at different life situations, for example, you know, people can be parents or caregivers for other, you know, people. Maybe you have a really time-consuming hobby that you engage with.

30:27 Emily: All of that is fine. Why would someone else not be able to work during their free time as you were just talking about that wasn’t taken up with progressing towards their degree? Let students manage their own time, and if it includes making money, that’s okay. As long as they’re doing what they need to do, you know, for the PhD, kind of my opinion on that. I’m not a fan of these outside work prohibitions, especially when they’re really, really broad, like saying you can’t have any outside source of work or income versus saying something like you can’t have a job where it interferes with the hours you’re expected to be in lab. That kind of thing makes sense. Like they don’t want you being pulled away from your primary responsibilities to head to your W2 job somewhere else. But to say that you can’t have like a freelance, you know, thing on the side, that’s totally up to your own time and discretion. It just does not make logical sense to me.

31:16 Tyler: Absolutely. One thing I’ll add here also is thinking about that just because you’re telling students they can’t get jobs and be compensated for their time, that often can lead to detrimental effects in the way that a faculty member might say, oh, Hey, you have this fellowship, and it won’t let you have any other jobs. So you can do this research for me on the side, right? And it puts these weird power dynamics in place that faculty can take advantage of you. I never had that, but I will say I have seen peers struggle with that, that they’re on this fellowship year until faculty see them as someone they can add to their research team because they have extra hours now, and now they’re not being compensated for that research, but they’re still being expected to put work in. And so, those are some things we should really think about in these prohibitions.

Time to Pay Higher Stipends?

32:05 Emily: Yeah. The general problem of unpaid labor in academia coming down to a fellowship recipient. Absolutely. And the final kind of point that I wanted to bring up is just the very, very simple financial solution of pay higher stipends pay, bigger fellowships, just pay people more. Would you like to add anything on this issue as a general solution? Just give a higher stipend.

32:32 Tyler: Yeah, no, I completely agree with it. I think it’s wild that we have, you know, careers in the real world that will raise your salary annually, or supposedly, to keep up with living wages, but grad students are still getting the same stipend they did 10 years ago. And so, I absolutely agree with increasing it appropriately and really taking those things into account.

32:59 Emily: Yeah, I’m especially thinking about this issue right now in a time of, you know, high inflation and wondering, now we’ve experienced rather low inflation for the last, you know, more than 10 years now. And so having no increase in stipend or a small increase in stipend that may have been manageable. But now programs really need to be proactive about responding to these increases in inflation by offering larger annual cost of living adjustments and increases. And I’m just afraid that it’s going to take some of them like three years of studying the issue before they finally like raise the stipend for goodness sakes. And similarly, I’ve seen this issue too with fees increasing. So like sometimes state universities, they can’t increase their tuition. You know, there are certain caps on how fast they can increase it, but there are much fewer restrictions on how fast they can increase fees.

33:47 Emily: And so, fees on graduate students can increase rapidly without there being increases in the stipend to actually pay for those fees. And so that’s something I want, and obviously program administrators to keep that in mind, just like, what are you even charging your students that’s going to come out of their own pocket? And can you then add to what’s going into their pocket to make up for that because if you have this static stipend for five years and the fees increase every single year, you may not know going into graduate school that that could be a possibility, but it has happened.

34:14 Tyler: Absolutely. That’s a great point. One more thing I would like to add is, thinking about how we structure financial aid advisors and having those cater to students. You know, we mentioned the point earlier about really understanding that students have different financial needs and we should be catering these setups towards them. And one of the ways we could do that is really assigning one financial aid advisor to a student. So that one financial aid advisor gets to know you over four years, gets to know your needs. And they’re able to really cater these kinds of policies and adjustments as necessary. I have had that at some institutions. You know, my first institution, I had a really great relationship with my first financial aid advisor. You know, they knew me on a first-name basis. However, later on, I went to an institution that treated me more like a customer. That I would just come in and whoever was at the desk would serve me that day. And they often didn’t have any clue about my needs. They didn’t know how my scholarship worked and how it was, you know, structured, et cetera. And it always led to confusion and made life a lot more difficult for me. And so, that’s one solution I often put out there is for institutions to really think of students as students, as human beings, and not just customers that they can just, you know, serve with a one-stop-shop.

How Do We Advocate?

35:33 Emily: I love that point. Thank you so much for adding that. It makes total sense because once you get to know the students more intimately, and you’re not having those, like I’m meeting you for the first time conversations over and over and over again. As you said, they can better understand your needs, and then they can better advocate for you when they’re talking about policy changes within their own like offices or whatever. And speaking of advocacy, we talked at the beginning of the episode about, you know, why it’s important to advocate on these, you know, financial and benefits-related matters. We talked about what you, you know, the listener could advocate for at their own institutions. By the way, if the listener, if you listeners have other issues you want to raise, please tag us on Twitter or add a comment to the show notes for the episode, anything like that, email us, that would be great. But to conclude this, how do we actually go about advocating? What are the actions that someone could take to, you know, try to enact change on one of these issues?

36:27 Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think there are a lot of ways to go about this, and you’ve got to really find what fits you. One thing that I often do is I write, I write about my issues. I tell my story, and every story I tell, I try to end it with, you know, asking myself the question, what would make this experience better? You know, you can read the story to the article that we linked earlier. I really just wrote writing to get my frustration out about this financial aid advisor, and then telling me to manage my money better. I started writing about that frustration, and then I turned the question on myself and I said, what would’ve made that situation better so I can really think of recommendations for other people? And publishing them in these kinds of outlets that higher education practitioners read, that’s one way to do it.

37:09 Tyler: Another way would just be going through your own institutional systems, setting up meetings, you know, when you really run into something, meet with your department chair on the reimbursements. Meet with the head of your financial aid department and say, Hey, why is the system set up like this? It’s really causing a barrier for me. Having those kinds of conversations with people on your campus, I think, you know, and maybe it’s a big assumption, but I like to assume that people always have your best intention in mind. And I like to assume that people who are working on these college campuses are trying to help students and trying to listen to you. Just sometimes they might not be aware of that. And so, bringing those issues up to people that are in a position to make change is one way to go about that.

37:52 Emily: And I think, you know, back when we had that conversation on Dear Grad Student, I was listening to you, you know, share this approach of sharing your own story, vulnerably, like opening up to an administrator and saying, okay, this is the policy that’s in place, and this is the effect that it’s having on me personally. And is there something we can do to alleviate this situation? I thought that was a wonderful way to go about it. And it’s actually a theme I’ve heard over and over again as I’ve talked with graduate students about negotiation, for example, there’s, you know, an early point in this, which is like negotiating your offer letter before you even become a student at that institution. That’s a great time for negotiation. But the way that I heard that students were going about this was by sharing vulnerably how they anticipated the stipend and benefits offered by an institution, how they anticipated that would affect their personal finances and their lives and their stress level and their ability to devote, you know, time to their studies and all that kind of thing.

38:45 Emily: And it just is like, it’s not like a hard nose like you have to give me more, you have to fix this. It’s like, Hey, I’m having an issue here. Like what can be done? Like what creatives solutions can we come to that are going to help with this? And as you said, you know, that can happen not just at that early point before you become a student, but over time you can develop relationships and go back to these people over and over again. And they can really learn again how these policies are affecting you. So, I love that suggestion and your approach to it.

Unionization Movements and Collective Bargaining

39:11 Emily: One other topic I wanted to bring up was about unions and unionization movements, or not even like, necessarily like official unions, but just I’ll call it collective bargaining. So like getting together with other people, let’s say in your department, even if you’re not represented by a union and saying to the administrators, Hey, 50% of us are having a problem with this policy. Like what can we do about it? Same kind of conversation, but coming from a group rather from an individual. Do you have any thoughts on these, you know, unionization movements or how this can be a part of advocacy?

39:42 Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. I think the big thing to say here is like, you don’t have to wait for a union to form. You could be the one that is forming it. I did this often informally, you know, I never thought to call us the union, but I would just share my experiences vulnerably with my peers and they would share theirs with me. And we’d have these conversations back and forth in private until we finally, you know, just, oh, you know what, I’m having the same issue. And we’d come together and we would go approach the chair of our department or, you know, someone that does have power in our school and say, Hey, we’re having this issue. There’s multiple of us. Is there anything we could do? And that’s how I often would position any kind of argument or, you know, any kind of advocacy that I would take to someone else. I would say other students are having it, too. This is a problem that we should really, that warrants addressing. So, yes.

40:35 Emily: That’s a perfect example. I’m so glad that, I mean, just as you said, like if a union is in place, go through that channel. If a unionization movement is in place, you know, join up with that and make your issues like heard to that larger group as well. Even if not, as you said, you don’t have to wait for it, you can go as a group and express your, you know, desire for something to change. So, love that so much.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

40:55 Emily: Tyler, it’s been great speaking with you again. Wonderful to have you on the podcast and have all of your insights here. I’m really glad you agreed to do this episode, and I want to ask you the standard question that I ask of all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And that could be something that we’ve touched on in the course of this interview, or it could be something completely new.

41:15 Tyler: Yeah. Well, the big advice I’ve been telling people, even people starting at my current position at my, you know, Foundation has been asking for, you know, some moving expenses and a signing bonus. You know, for instance, not all jobs will let you negotiate the salary. You know, my position wouldn’t actually let me negotiate the salary. But my way of negotiating was saying, Hey, I’m a low-income student coming out of a PhD program. I could really use a moving stipend and, you know, it was, again, going back to this whole being vulnerable. I could do that in my career as well. And, you know, they really wanted me, they understood my situation and all these things I’d advocated and wrote on. They knew my experiences. And they were able to provide me a moving expense. So that was one thing. The second thing I will say is, just making sure you really understand and read deeply on your benefits when you do sign, you know, what’s it mean to start a retirement fund? Those are things important to think about when you’re starting a new job and to pay in as much as you can, when you’re still young. As much as you can afford, you know, as someone who might have loans or whatever it might be to pay off.

42:20 Emily: Love that advice. I love being able to speak with people who are already past the grad school experience and can give us a view from the other side in the world of proper full-time employee stuff. So, that’s great.

42:32 Tyler: The grass is greener over here. I promise that.

42:35 Emily: Yeah. Good to hear. Good to hear. Thank you so much for coming on. It’s been great to talk with you again!

42:40 Tyler: Yeah. It’s been great talking with you. Thank you for having me!

Outtro

42:48 Emily: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC.

This Veteran Receives External Funding for Her PhD Program

March 14, 2022 by Meryem Ok Leave a Comment

In this episode, Emily interviews Emily Knitter, a PhD student in counseling psychology at the University at Buffalo and US Army veteran. After being medically discharged from the military, Emily funded her undergraduate degree with the GI Bill and subsequently received five years of PhD funding through the Vocational Rehabilitation program. This external source of funding has given her a greater degree of autonomy in her research and enables her to serve as a spokesperson for advocacy efforts in her department. Emily also gives her insights into the mental load of home ownership and being a landlord based on her experience of owning two homes.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

  • PF for PhDs Community
  • Veteran Readiness and Employment (VR&E)
  • PF for PhDs Tax Workshops
  • You Need a Budget App
  • PF for PhDs Register for Mailing List
  • PF for PhDs Podcast Hub
  • Emily Knitter’s LinkedIn
This Veteran Receives External Funding for Her PhD Program

Teaser

00:00 Emily K: It’s five years. Like it’s such a long piece of our lives, that the thought of kind of putting everything else that you want to accomplish in life, in addition to this degree, on hold, just that feels like an opportunity cost to me.

Introduction

00:22 Emily R: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 11, Episode 6, and today my guest is Emily Knitter, a PhD student in counseling psychology at the University at Buffalo and U.S. Army veteran. After being medically discharged from the military, Emily funded her undergraduate degree with the GI Bill and subsequently received five years of PhD funding through the Vocational Rehabilitation program. This external source of funding has given her a greater degree of autonomy in her research and enables her to serve as a spokesperson for advocacy efforts in her department. Emily also gives her insights into the mental load of home ownership and being a landlord based on her experience of owning two homes. If I may say so myself, this would be a great time to join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community for a monthly price of $29.

01:25 Emily R: With Tax Day coming up on April 18th, several of the included resources are quite timely, such as: 1. How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!) and/or How to Complete Your Postdoc Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), which help PhD trainees prepare their 2021 tax returns with respect to their higher education income and expenses. 2. Quarterly Estimated Tax for Fellowship Recipients, which helps people who aren’t having income tax withheld from their paychecks figure out their estimated tax payments. 3. Open Your First IRA, which walks you through the seven boxes you have to check to confidently open, fund, and invest your first retirement account and provides in-depth resources to support you. The deadline to open and fund a 2021 IRA is Tax Day, but you won’t want to wait quite that long.

02:19 Emily R: You’ll have access to numerous evergreen resources, such as my Wealthy PhD webinars on financial goals, investing, debt repayment, and cash flow. Your membership also includes invitations to monthly live calls with me and other Community members; you’re welcome to bring your own questions and topics of interest to these calls for discussion. Our next live call is on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. You can learn more about and join the Personal Finance for PhDs Community at PFforPhDs.community. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Emily Knitter.

Would You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

03:04 Emily R: I have joining me on the podcast today Emily Knitter. She is a third-year PhD student in counseling psychology at the University at Buffalo, and she is a veteran. And so her path to the PhD program that she’s in is a little bit different from most of the people that I interview and her funding course has been different. So I’m really excited to talk to her about that. So Emily, welcome to the program. And will you please tell the listeners a little bit more about yourself?

03:27 Emily K: Thank you. Very honored to be here. Especially since we both have great names. So yeah, like you mentioned, I was in the Army. I served as a journalist for five years. I joined straight out of high school. I was medically retired and thought I was going to go kind of down that same path, but I knew that journalism didn’t pay really well in the real world, quote unquote. So I decided to go to school for marketing. So I rolled out of school. I did one year in a marketing program down in Georgia, despised it, dropped out. And then I ended up getting a job opportunity and I moved to New York. And so I worked for a year at a YMCA doing membership management, insurance billing, a lot of office work and also despised every single minute of that. But, you know, learning kind of what pieces I liked, what pieces I didn’t.

04:21 Emily K: And at the same time I started going to therapy myself. And so, because I was in the military, I had access to therapy through the VA at no cost, which was huge at the time. And that was life-changing for me personally and professionally. It really kind of helped me start solidifying who I wanted to be and who I thought I was, which was something that I had lost when I left the military. I really didn’t feel like I identified as being a soldier with every fiber of my being while I was in, you know, I just kind of thought I was Emily who happened to wear a uniform. But then once I lost that uniform, it was like I was completely lost. And working with her, she really helped me kind of start to understand myself better, understand maybe where I would want to go with my life and the influence that she had on me combined with kind of really realizing that I liked helping solve problems at the Y and I liked helping people with that.

05:32 Emily K: You know, I started thinking maybe I should go back. I didn’t have an undergrad at all, besides my one year in marketing at the time, that maybe psychology would be a cool path to go down. And, you know, I figured if I could make a third of the difference in somebody else’s life the way that she helped me, that that would be a worthwhile way to kind of invest my life and my time. And so with not a broken heart at all, I put in my notice at the Y, and I went back. I did my undergraduate at St. Bonaventure University, which is down in Olean, New York. A really, really cool private university down there. And so I spent three years, graduated there, and then I rolled right into the PhD program that I’m in now. So that’s kind of my brief background there.

Funding Undergrad: GI Bill

06:23 Emily R: And can you tell us how you funded the undergraduate degree? Because I understand your status as a veteran played into that.

06:30 Emily K: Yes, absolutely. So I used the GI Bill, which is a program that anyone who served at least 90 days of active duty in the military qualifies for. There are a couple exceptions to beyond that, but that’s kind of the standard is basically anyone who served, made it through basic training, qualifies for this. And so it gives you 36 months of benefits where it pays all your tuition, it pays all of your fees, you get a living stipend, and you also get money for books and supplies. So it’s really an incredible program. And so I used the year of it in the marketing program. And then, so that one, I was in state in Georgia, so I didn’t have any problems there. And when I moved to New York, I had residency because I’d been there for a year. So I applied, but St. Bonaventure is private.

07:26 Emily K: And so, there was an additional program for there because the GI Bill only covers public in-state tuition and fees. And so anything above and beyond that, in theory, you would have to take on. But St. Bonaventure there’s a program that schools can buy into called the yellow ribbon program, which they end up splitting the difference with the VA of whatever is above and beyond their cap for the state. So because they were yellow ribbon program, I was able to attend this program completely at no cost to me, with the living stipend, which, you know, really was quite a luxury. Because it’s not a school I would’ve gone to if I was accruing debt at all, but it was a really, really great experience for me. And the class sizes, I mean we were usually like one to eight, one to 12 for the ratio.

08:18 Emily K: So it was just a really, really great experience. But a big thing that I’ve noticed in my experience is like how much the culture of the school really makes a difference. You know, because that was a big reason why I stopped in my marketing program is because they didn’t have any veteran support and I didn’t really feel like they cared whether I was there or not. And so like when I left, I don’t think they noticed, whereas at this school they were very responsive and it made a big difference in my experience of the program and also kind of set the bar for what I looked for when I was looking for my PhD programs.

Transition to Grad School

09:04 Emily R: So let’s talk about your transition to graduate school. We’ve already heard the motivation from your work with a counselor previously, and we’ve also heard that, you know, you’re a bit selective about the institutions that you want to apply to you because you want to be supported. How did you end up in the particular program that you did? And then we’ll talk about how you’re funding it.

09:22 Emily K: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So the big thing actually while I was in undergrad is I met my now ex-husband at the time, but he had roots in this area. And so one of the big things that I was looking for on top of making sure it was going to be a right culture fit, because I had experienced what that doesn’t feel like in the past, was I was relatively landlocked. And so, I was entertaining the possibility of doing both master’s degrees and PhD programs. I’m kind of a like shoot for the stars and see where it lands type of person. And so this particular program that I’m in now, the counseling psychology track, was the one that stood out above and beyond everything else as what I was looking for. They seemed receptive. I was able to set up some informational interviews with some of the faculty, even before applying.

10:18 Emily K: They were getting back with me, they seemed interested. For all those reasons, this was actually the only PhD program I applied to. Like I put all my eggs in this basket and I was like, if I don’t get accepted here, the deadlines for the master’s programs were later on. So I knew I could kind of fall back and apply somewhere with that. But the big thing that I wanted to do is I wanted to make sure that I had the capability to do therapy, that I was going to be able to work with veterans afterwards on a one-to-one level, as well as doing research. So, my program is actually in the department of education, it’s not in the department of psychology, but because at the University of Buffalo, the psychology department is exclusively research focused. So if you’re getting the clinical psychology degree, you’re not doing direct intervention work.

Vocational Rehabilitation

11:13 Emily K: And so that was really important to me. And also, just the personality of the professors that I’d met and kind of the vibe I’d gotten from the program really felt like it was going to be a better fit for me. So that’s why I chose them. And then as you mentioned, so my funding, while I was an undergrad, I got really involved with the SVA, which is the Student Veterans of America club on campus. And so I’m talking to other veterans and I’m kind of, you know, getting to know like what they’re doing. And one of them who was also medically retired asked me if I had heard of this Voc Rehab program, which is the Vocational Rehabilitation and Education I think is the full title for it. And I thought that you could only use one or the other with the Voc Rehab or the GI Bill.

12:07 Emily K: And so I said, no, like I’m using the GI Bill. You know, I don’t qualify for that. And he goes, no, I use the GI Bill, too. And then I switched over. He’s like, you should at least apply and just see what they say. And it was a pretty simple online application. So I was just like, doesn’t hurt anything. And the requirements for it, which it’s a little different than anybody who served, who qualifies for the GI bill. So the Voc Rehab, you do have to have a disability rating of at least 10%, which on the spectrum is a pretty minimal bar to entry there. And so they agreed, let me come in for an interview, and then they do a face-to-face evaluation is really what they call it. And it’s looking at what jobs you’re trained or skills that you have currently, and where you would like to be.

12:59 Emily K: And one thing that I really appreciate about the program is it’s not just getting you a job, it’s making sure that you’re going to be fulfilled in what you’re doing. So even if in theory, you know, because I had the journalism background, I could have gotten a job doing something with that. But I knew that really wasn’t what I wanted to do. And so, because of the disability that I had, I can’t do something really, really physical. And so, we were able to kind of navigate that, and I got qualified to be in the program. And another thing that I really appreciate about the program is they’re very flexible, I would say. Like there are the requirements that are listed on the website as like, okay, it’s, it’s two years of funding, it’s dot dot, dot, dot dot. You have to do this, you have to be this, you can’t be out for longer than this time, but basically there’s an asterisk next to every single thing on the website that’s like, but it depends.

14:00 Emily K: And so again, with the whole shooting for the stars thing, once I got accepted into the program, my counselor who I was assigned to said, well, do some research, figure out, you know, look at salaries, talk to people, you know, really figure out what you feel like is going to not just get you a job that’s going to put you where you want to be, but you’re also going to feel content doing it. So again, I came to her on the day that I was supposed to kind of propose my path and I said, clearly I’ll be most fulfilled with a PhD, you know? And for whatever reason, again, stars aligned. And she said, okay. And so I got a waiver that instead of the two years, they covered an entire five-year program. So that was May of 2018. And that was the single best Christmas gift I’ve ever gotten in my life. I walked out of there crying, like unable to believe that that was the reality, like I felt so fortunate.

Timing with PhD Application

15:12 Emily R: So how did the timing of applying for the Voc Rehab program dovetail with your application to the PhD program? Like, were you already admitted to the program or were you then going to apply after getting the Voc Rehab, you know, funding?

15:25 Emily K: I got accepted to Voc Rehab first, and then I applied to the program. And so, and that’s what she said. She’s like, well, you know, this is all well and good that we will fund you. She’s like, but now you have to get accepted. And so, that’s where, because between the program, the Voc Rehab requirements, and then being landlocked because of my personal life, it was very much all my eggs in this basket, you know, and that’s why I had the backup plan of the master’s. Because I was like even getting a master’s funded is incredible. And I can still be a therapist and I can still counsel with the master’s. And if I were going to have to pay it out of pocket, that’s what I would’ve done was go the master’s route just for the opportunity costs, but between the two. But it’s all paid for, and I’m graduating completely debt-free. So, I couldn’t say no.

How Are Your Peers Funded?

16:23 Emily R: Yeah. So, as you said, that’s an incredible gift to be not just admitted to the program, but given, you know, 250% of the funding that you kind of were asking for initially, or thought you would get. So tell me a little bit about how your peers are funded. Because, I’m not really sure. You’ve said, you know, in the school of education, counseling psychology, so like, are your peers doing assistantships? Are they in fellowships? Are they paying out of pocket? How are they funding their program?

16:50 Emily K: Yes. So, I’m 100% the atypical weird one. You know, everybody else in my cohort is for the most part, either in an RA or a TA position. And it’s been a blessing in a number of ways because unfortunately, and I’m not sure if this is kind of the case across all of academia right now or just in my program, but most of my cohort members who came in with funding, it was promised for a year or two years. But then they were told it would be really easy to find other TA positions, other RA positions, you know, and it wouldn’t be a problem. And half of my cohort right now has unfortunately had to switch to actually taking on student loans because they just don’t have positions available. And so, it’s been so stressful for them. And it’s been kind of a different, I want to say like, a different bag than what they were sold originally.

17:52 Emily K: But it’s tough to watch, and it makes me even more thankful being in the position that I am in because it’s very secure. You know, if I take longer than five years to finish the program, then it’s on me. But as long as I stay in the timeline, then at least that is really, really consistent. I’m not worried about it. Grad school is stressful enough that I’m very thankful that it’s not also adding that burden on. And it’s been interesting, too, that because my funding is not coming from with in the program, and I don’t really have a, beyond being accepted in the program, I have an advisor who’s helping me with my research, but it’s almost more of a consultation role because I’m not doing any RA work for her or anything like that, that I have, I want to say, a lot more autonomy in a way than everybody else. You know, because there’s nothing in a contract that says I can’t work part-time, you know, and, you know, I’m not committed to doing 20 hours of whatever it is for a professor, you know, or grading, anything like that.

19:04 Emily K: And it’s been a blessing, especially because I’m coming into the program as a non-traditional student, you know, being older. My ex and I, we bought a house, you know, I had full life bills. And although it does provide a housing stipend, you know, it would be enough if I wanted to live the starving grad school life. But I’m thankful to be able, because I don’t have to work for the program, so I do have a part-time job as well. And so the supplement between that income with the stipend I get through my funding, you know, I’m able to kind of live my life a bit more comfortably than a typical grad student. And I think that that’s, I mean I’m busy, we’re all crazy busy, and it’s navigating 150 hours of work and you know, not that much time in a week. But there have definitely been points during the program, not related to funding, where I’ve taken the lead with my cohort advocating for different things, because I think there’s less of a power dynamic in my situation than there is in some of those. So it’s easier for me to kind of say, Hey, we would actually really like this or this isn’t, you know, working deadlines, timelines, different policies that they’re implementing. And so, I’m thankful that because of my funding situation, I am able to kind of stand much more confidently in myself throughout the program.

20:46 Emily R: So, I’m so glad that you’re like articulating this this way because I think this is actually much more widely applicable than just for your particular “I’m funded, you know, because of my veteran status,” like kind of situation. So because what I’m hearing is one, your peers are unfortunately experiencing this, you know, drying up of available assistantships. I’m assuming this is due to COVID, right? We’re recording this in January, 2022. So that sounds about the right timing?

21:10 Emily K: Correct. Yes. That’s the story we’re getting.

Autonomy and Advocacy

21:14 Emily R: Yeah. So because they were not, now, it’s interesting because when I talk with prospective graduate students, I don’t put a lot of emphasis on whether or not funding is guaranteed for five years or whether it’s like pretty much every one has funding for five years. It’s not explicitly guaranteed, but like the pattern is that we get people funded. It sounds like in this, you know, program, there’s been a big difference between those two, right? The expected path was not what turned out to happen. And because there was not a guarantee, you know, in writing whatever, your classmates were kind of left out to dry. Now, the advantage that you have because you know, the way that your funding, because it’s coming from a total third-party source, it sounds very much like having an external fellowship, which gives you, as you were saying, a lot more autonomy.

21:56 Emily R: You’re not beholden to like, you know, the grants or whatever that your advisor’s working on to have to do that particular kind of work. You can choose the work that you want to do. It’s more of probably more of a collegial relationship than like a, you know, boss underling kind of relationship with your advisor. And so I think that this just goes to emphasize the utility of having that kind of funding going into a graduate program. Yours is a little bit of a different source than most other people might have it, but I think the benefits are very similar. And I love that you’re, you know, you said you’re using this position of having a little bit more independence to advocate, to be the spokesperson, right? To kind of advocate on behalf of everyone. Because as you said, the power dynamics are a little bit different for your peers than for you. So, I’m really pleased with everything you’ve said, and it just sounds like yeah, that the benefits you’re articulating are also available to people with external fellowships, usually.

22:45 Emily K: 100%. Yeah. And that would be like, if you have the possibility to have any sort of external funding, that from my experience alone, I can’t speak for anything else, it seems very much the way to go.

Commercial

23:00 Emily R: Emily here for a brief interlude! Taxes are weirdly, unexpectedly difficult for funded grad students and fellowship recipients at any level of PhD training. Your university might send you strange tax forms or no tax forms at all. They might not withhold income tax from your paychecks, even though you owe it. It’s a mess. I’ve created a ton of free resources to assist you with understanding and preparing your 2021 tax return, which are available at PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I hope you will check them out to ease much of the stress of tax season. If you want to go deeper with the material or have a question for me, please join one of my tax workshops, which are linked from PFforPhDs.com/tax/. I offer one workshop on preparing your annual tax return for graduate students and one workshop on calculating your quarterly estimated tax for fellowship and training grant recipients. The next live Q&A call for the annual tax return workshop, How to Complete Your Grad Student Tax Return (and Understand It, Too!), is this coming Sunday, March 20th. It would be my pleasure to help you save you time and potentially money this tax season, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Now back to our interview.

Post-PhD Career Path: Working with Veterans

24:27 Emily R: So, yeah, I’m really glad to hear about sort of your experiential difference in your program because of this funding. Do you see this having an effect on your career later? I think you mentioned earlier that, you know, you either currently work with veterans or want to work with veterans, what do you see your future career path with this PhD?

24:45 Emily K: Yeah, that kind of has always been my bigger picture is wanting to give back to the veteran community. Especially because, you know, I could not have known making almost a slight impulse decision at 17 years old to join the military, all that I would’ve gained from it, you know. It’s really been the best dumb decision that teenage me ever made. But there’s also such a small percentage of veterans who have higher education degrees. And so being able to, you know, in the same way that right now I’m able to kind of help out and advocate for my other cohort members is being able to take that and advocate for the community by, you know, having that lived experience, but also having the legitimacy, I guess that comes from having a PhD. And through all of my pivoting to get to this point, you know, the first three years really after I got out of the military were tough, and I didn’t realize that everybody else kind of also struggled with the transition because I wasn’t talking to other veterans at that time.

26:09 Emily K: And I thought that I was the only one who was failing, you know, especially after I’d done quite well in the military. I got promoted really quickly. You know, I’m really good at kind of knowing what the expectations are and meeting them which does translate really well, I think into the PhD program too. So yeah, it’s very much my hope to continue working with veterans, particularly as they’re transitioning out, you know, and it’s figuring out the why of what they want to do, and who they are, and kind of what does that path look like for them, independently. And so I think, like I said, you know, being a veteran is definitely going to help with that path. But you know, even now, and I think if life takes me in a different direction than kind of what I’m expecting right now is, you know, on a very pragmatic level, there are hiring preferences in a lot of organizations for individuals that have a veteran’s status, especially in the VA, which is where I’m hoping to go.

27:08 Emily K: But most places there are kind of incentive programs for that. I’m not sure if the way in which I was funded per se will make a difference afterwards. But I think what we were talking about before with, you know, when you have that external funding and you’re able to kind of be more collegial with people and kind of work on, okay, how do I navigate this situation? How do I advocate here? How do I make change? I think I’m going to be going into the job market maybe with a little bit more confidence than I would have otherwise where like, okay, now I know what I’m bringing to the table. It’s not thank you for offering something to me. It’s like, this is what I’m providing. Okay. How can this be an equal relationship for both of us? So I think that more than I’ve maybe even thought before, until we’ve had this conversation, is definitely going to help, kind of, regardless of what that picture might look for me after I’m done.

Homeownership Eperience

28:09 Emily R: Beautiful. It’s very exciting! So, I want circle back to, you know, you mentioned earlier homeownership, and real estate is one of my favorite topics right now, especially for graduate students. So, I think that your path to homeownership is probably different and informed by your experience in the military. I just know sort of, I guess my stereotype impression is like people in the military sort of buy houses much more readily than people not do because of the easier funding mechanism through, you know the VA, just cultural differences, right? So, can you tell us briefly your experience with homeownership, and then how you think like someone, for instance, in your program, what would be the circumstances that would make homeownership a good idea for another PhD student, given your kind of different perspective on it?

29:03 Emily K: Sure, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, again, going back to all of the amazing things that have helped out from little teenage Emily’s decision to join the military is, so I do qualify for VA home loans which are amazing, because it’s a 0% down payment. And the whole process is pretty simple. And like you said, there is, I didn’t own a house while I was in the military, but many of my friends did, and it’s, you know, not a thing at all to kind of buy when you’re stationed here, you move a couple years later, you sell it, you rent it. You know, it’s very, very common to own a home. So there’s not, I didn’t have a big story built up in my head, I guess, of this being like a really major, big deal that I need to put five years of effort into before I do it.

29:54 Emily K: For better or for worse, frankly. You know, I think I now am much more intentional with kind of my financial journey than I was back then because, I think it’s getting better from what I’ve heard, but the military covers everything. And so you have this very strong sense of security. So you don’t have to think about your finances as much because it’s not not going to be there. And so now, you know, I’ve really kind of taken myself on a journey, and I’m much more intentional about the decisions I’m making and how I’m spending my money now. But I am thankful for that, I guess, lack of stigma of buying a house that I did see there. Because when I first moved to New York and I was working the job at the Y, the one reason I love the Buffalo, New York area is the cost of living is super low.

30:47 Emily K: And so, the year that I was there, it was substantially cheaper to buy than it was to rent. And because I didn’t need to have the down payment saved up, it was really accessible to just make that happen. And so, I bought a little renovated hunting cabin. It was 800 square feet. It was beautiful. I loved it. When I was working at the Y for that year, and it was only 20 minutes from St. Bonaventure. So it just worked out really perfectly to kind of transfer during my undergrad. And so, I lived there my entire undergrad degree time. And then when I met my ex-husband, I moved in with him and we rented it out for a year. And for me, because the financial component of it was actually not super impactful. Like, the mortgage was very affordable because it was so small. Repairs were affordable, too, when they happened.

Emotional Labor of Landlording

31:50 Emily K: And it was just, it was perfect when I lived there myself. But when I moved into the city and we rented the house out for a year, although the tenants were amazing, nothing happened terribly wrong with the house during that year, but that was also my first year of grad school. And I found I was just constantly worried when the shoe was going to drop. And when I was going to get a phone call that, you know, the roof had blown off, who knows. I don’t know, anxiety, that was my fear. And so, after that year, even though nothing happened, but it just, it added so much emotional labor that I was now needing to invest in grad school and everything else I was doing with my life, it just wasn’t worth it for me. You know, I’ve very much decided, you know, I have no desire to be a landlord in my life.

32:44 Emily K: And so I was able to sell it. I owned it for five years. So, it worked out as far as all of that. I didn’t make a lot of money off of it because I hadn’t put any money down. And the housing market had been kind of steady that whole time. But I didn’t lose any money. And so it really was kind of a wash for me in a positive way. So I loved the ownership, and then we purchased a second house, right as the program was starting. And it was great because we were dual income, you know, he’s been in the trades for 15 years, so he’s very, very successful there. He had roots there. We had planned on remaining in the area forever. So it wasn’t a matter of being concerned about, okay, what if I move for internship?

33:35 Emily K: You know, it doesn’t make sense to buy if it’s only a couple of years like that. And so it really was nice. I actually surprisingly got a lot of pushback from my program when I mentioned that we were house-hunting, just like, well, do you have time for that right now? Like how is that going to fit in with a PhD program? You know, like that’s, you know, people just seeming in awe, I guess, that we were going to buy a house, even though we owned two houses at that time. So I think there’s, at least in my experience, there’s kind of a stigma that when you’re in your program, you should not even consider anything outside of the program. It’s the blood, the sweat, the tears, and that is your life, and everything else just kind of should be on hold until you’re done.

Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs

34:29 Emily K: And I think that maybe it’s coming in from kind of later in life starting this program, maybe it’s just my personality. I don’t know, but it’s five years. Like it’s such a long piece of our lives that the thought of kind of putting everything else that you want to accomplish in life, in addition to this degree, on hold, that feels like an opportunity cost to me. You know, and that feels, there’s always going to be something that’s going to keep you, you know, make you feel like it’s not the right time to do something. And so if you can responsibly, you know, financially do it, I think it’s just all managing your priorities. And so, it worked out really great for us. We have since separated, and I will say now though, I rent an apartment and talking about the, you know, emotional labor of owning.

35:26 Emily K: It’s great. I don’t want to be a landlord. Renting right now, all my utilities are included. I get to come home. I don’t have to worry about house chores. Like, I mean, beyond cleaning, but repairs, anything maintenance, I don’t have to worry about any of that. My landlord lives next door. We have a great relationship, and it’s taken a lot of weight off my shoulders. And you know, I’m spending actually more money renting than I was when I owned on kind of a month-to-month level. But I think it’s just what you value, and what you want your life to look like. And then, you know, making sure that you are intentional about the financial side of it too, but not having that be the only piece of the puzzle, if you will.

36:17 Emily R: What I really liked about that, your perspective on this is, that it takes into account your personal preference on whether or not owning and like doing the maintenance and upkeep and blah, blah, all that other stuff, whether that is going to be exciting and fun for you or whether it’s going to be like a burden and you don’t want to have it on your mind. And I think, of course the financial component is part of it, but when you’re in a, you know, lower cost of living area and your stipend is sufficient, or you have a dual income or whatever, that owning is a financial option at all, then you get to get to that question of, do I think this will enhance my life, especially emotionally during this program? Or do I think it’s going to detract from what I have going on? It sounds like, you know, your peers or the faculty, whoever you’re hearing messaging from, they had the perspective that this is going to detract from your life and it’s going to detract from your effort in the program, whatever. But I think it very much comes down to your personality. And you’ve enjoyed it both ways, and you’ve experienced it both ways. So yeah. I just think it comes down to yeah. What your preferences are and not so much, of course the financial question is there, but the preferences matter as well.

37:20 Emily K: Yeah. And I think it’s really kind of leaning into that what do you really want versus what do you feel like you should do? You know, and I think that it’s easy to get in that trap of like, okay, right now I should be bleeding for this program, or I should be doing X or Y or Z. But then really taking a step back and being like, oh wait, is that, where am I getting that belief from?

37:48 Emily R: Perfect. Absolutely. In terms of like money mindset, and you would know a lot more about this than I do, but that’s one of those limiting beliefs, right? Like I can only do one thing well during this five-year period of my life. It has to be my program. I can’t, you know, have relationships. I can’t be working on my own physical and mental health. I can’t be a homeowner. I can’t work on my finances, all limiting beliefs. Don’t have to be true for you. You get to decide, as long as you’re, you know, cognizant of what’s going on in your own mind. So, love that.

Best Financial Advice for Another Early-Career PhD

38:18 Emily R: Let’s wrap up with the final question that I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best financial advice for another early-career PhD? And it could be something that we’ve touched on during the interview, or it could be something completely different.

38:30 Emily K: Yeah, so when I was thinking about this question, and I was thinking about it, obviously, because I’m still a student, so, you know, advice for other students per se. And the two things that came up, one is really kind of what we just wrapped up in right now is, you know, don’t be afraid to own your journey. And that it doesn’t have to be the stereotype you think it should be for being a grad student. You know, it’s making sure you’re asking questions. It’s recognizing that you are also like competent and capable, and you’re here for a reason. And so, realizing that we’re also bringing something to the table and like it’s okay to advocate for yourself. And that can be for, you know, financial things. It can be for anything that you might need. But I know, you know, even it’s shifted for me, even though we’ve talked about how much autonomy I have in my program, compared to some of my peers, it has been a slow shift over the last three years to kind of like feel comfortable being my own advocate in that way.

39:38 Emily K: Financial advice, like just flat out, I would say have a budget. Like I use the You Need a Budget software online. I’ve been using that for the last couple of years, and that has entirely changed my life is just being able to kind of give your every single dollar that you have a job. And make sure that it’s not just, yeah, just budgeting alone, knowing what you’re actually spending. And then, because you can use that once you have that knowledge, to then start deciding, okay, what do I value and how do I want to make this money work for me in whatever capability that I have at that time? And I think the other thing financial that, I don’t know, maybe, I think it’s because I’ve had to kind of go through teaching myself finances the last couple years and that I think about it a lot.

40:30 Emily K: I talk about it a decent amount, and it’s still taboo in most kind of societal circles. Just like, don’t be afraid to talk about it. Like, almost every single person that I meet, all of my advisors, all my supervisors and my practicum students, like I know how much they’re making, I know what their benefits are. Like, just because if you ask, people usually will tell you. And I’ve been using it to get more of a gauge of like, okay, what does this really look like if I were to pursue this position, you know, in this type of career, because there’s so much we can do with our degree? So having that knowledge of, okay, I kind of know how lifestyle-wise I want to live. And so, figuring out, you know, time, all the different components, but also is this going to fund how I want to be moving forward?

41:27 Emily K: And so, having that knowledge has made me feel much more confident in being able to eliminate some paths, and also kind of lean more into thinking about some paths. And all of my friends in my cohort look at me like I have two heads when I say I ask people about their finances. So that would be definitely my advice is, you know, like ask questions, do your own research. Don’t just always take at face value you know what maybe you feel like is the right answer with that.

42:04 Emily R: Yeah. Well, thank you so much! Thank you so much for giving this interview. I really love to have this like different perspective for anyone else who is considering a career in the military, has come outt of the military. Maybe, like you, it’s just through chatting with people that you find out about this fantastic, you know, funding source for graduate school. Thank you so much for giving this interview!

42:21 Emily K: Thank you so much!

Outtro

42:29 Emily R: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! I have a gift for you! You know that final question I ask of all my guests regarding their best financial advice? I have collected short summaries of all the answers ever given on the podcast into a document that is updated with each new episode release. You can gain access to it by registering for my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/advice/. Would you like to access transcripts or videos of each episode? I link the show notes for each episode from PFforPhDs.com/podcast/. If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 3 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with an email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and increasing cash flow. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

An MD/PhD Pays with Time Instead of Money

November 1, 2021 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews Emily Przysinda, an MD/PhD student at the University of Rochester who is approximately halfway through her 8-year degree program. As is typical in a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), Emily’s funding package includes tuition and fees and a stipend for the entire program. Emily and Emily discuss the financial side of the MD/PhD and why it shouldn’t be thought of as a free medical degree. Emily shares why she chose an MD/PhD program and what the career options are afterwards. Thanks to the low cost of living in Rochester, Emily has been working on her finances intentionally for the last couple of years and is pursuing several savings and investing goals—but decided against buying a house. This episode is perfect for anyone considering an MD/PhD program or curious about the mindset of someone pursuing an 8-year-long graduate program.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • The Academic Society (Emily’s Affiliate Link)
  • Is an MD-PhD Right for Me? (AAMC Resources)
  • National MD-PhD Program Outcomes Study (Downloadable PDF)
  • PF for PhDs: Podcast Hub
  • PF for PhDs: Subscribe to Mailing List
  • Emily’s LinkedIn
  • Emily’s ResearchGate 
  • Emily’s Twitter (@EmilyPrzysinda)
mdphd pays with time instead of money

Teaser

00:00 Emily P: If you think about what an MD might be making in the four last years of their career, because that would be to assume they might have a more extended career by four years, it’s probably only about maybe a year or two worth of salaries of debt that they take on for this. But essentially I say that I pay in time and not money for my MD degree, just because of the opportunity costs of not having those extra four years of the career.

Introduction

00:37 Emily R: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs Podcast: A Higher Education in Personal Finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is Season 10, Episode 13, and today my guest is Emily Przysinda, an MD/PhD student at the University of Rochester who is approximately halfway through her 8-year degree program. As is typical in a Medical Scientist Training Program, Emily’s funding package includes tuition and fees and a stipend for the entire program. We discuss the financial side of the MD/PhD and why it shouldn’t be thought of as a free medical degree. Emily shares why she chose an MD/PhD program and what the career options are afterwards. Thanks to the low cost of living in Rochester, Emily has been working on her finances intentionally for the last couple of years and is pursuing several savings and investing goals—but decided against buying a house. This episode is perfect for anyone considering an MD/PhD program or curious about the mindset of someone pursuing an 8-year-long graduate program. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Emily Przysinda.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:50 Emily R: I am delighted to have joined me on the podcast today, Emily Przysinda. She is an MD/PhD student at the University of Rochester. And since the very beginning, like episode one of this podcast, I have wanted to interview an MD/PhD or an MD/PhD student. And Emily is the first person who has like, come along, who has volunteered to do that. So I’m really excited about this, and just delighted to have her on. So Emily, will you please introduce yourself to us and yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself?

02:17 Emily P: Hi, I’m delighted to be on the podcast, been listening for about a year now, so I’m really excited to be here. So I’m originally from Livonia, New York, which is south of Rochester. I went to Skidmore college in Saratoga Springs, majored in music and neuroscience, and I was also on the swim team there. After that, I worked in a music cognition lab at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and there I solidified my love for human cognitive neuroscience. And I applied to MD/PhD programs while I was there for two years. And then now I’m in the University of Rochester MD/PhD program, or MSTP, which stands for Medical Scientist Training Program. I’ve completed the first two years of medical school and also the first few years of my neuroscience PhD. And so I’m about halfway through, and my project is looking at social language processing in patients with schizophrenia using neuroimaging methods.

03:25 Emily P: So it’s fairly integrated with clinical and research. And yeah, and then also before I get started, I just want to acknowledge my privileges and express gratitude for just a couple of things. My family kind of had modest means, but I’m very lucky that all my needs were met and most of my wants were fulfilled. I learned how to save for big ticket items at a young age. And my life was very rich with relationships, activities, and experiences, especially in nature. And then for funding my undergraduate degree, I was happy and very grateful to get a good financial aid and merit combined scholarship and have around an average amount of student loan debt. And I’m very grateful for some family support with room and board and transportation costs. And I’ve been financially independent from my parents shortly after graduation. And I’m currently a white female and I’m only financially responsible for myself. So that’s just kind of some things that I’m very grateful for and want to get into before we talked about any breakdown of finances and things like that.

How Do Finances Work for an MD/PhD?

04:40 Emily R: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for that context. So I don’t know that all of my listeners will be very familiar with MD/PhD or MSTP programs. So could you please explain like, just in general, like maybe the timeframe and so forth and and of course what the finances are, because I think we all know the finances about PhD programs. Most of us can make some assumptions about the finances of MD programs, but how does the MD/PhD fit, you know, between those two?

05:06 Emily P: So, yeah, it’s actually kind of similar to the PhD except for it’s longer for most programs. And so I’m in a NIH-funded program, and not all programs have funding from this. So it’s a combination of NIH funding and funding from my institution. And so I get a stipend that’s like essentially like a STEM graduate stipend for the full eight years of the program. And just to give you an estimate about that, it’s around $30K, which I think is standard depending on the city that you’re living in. And the PhD is kind of sandwiched in between two years of med school on each side. So you have two years of med school, which is mostly didactic courses and some patient interactions, and then you have the PhD, which is four years.

06:03 Emily P: And then the last two years of MD, which is mostly clinical. So it’s eight years long, and you really try to only keep the PhD to four years, but some people do have longer. And then, in terms of just like a couple of nuances to the finances, the PI is kind of responsibl for your stipend for after the first 21 months of your PhD. So it kind of gives the PIs an incentive to take on an MD/PhD student. You stress to them that it’s four years, or maybe even a little bit less, so you can make that transition back into med school. And you’re encouraged to apply for an F30, which is like the MD/PhD equivalent of an F31 grant. The program here, at least, covers health insurance and disability insurance. And they take over, once you go back to medical school. We also have about a $2,400 stipend for MD/PhD things during the program. So like conferences, test prep, like lab laptops. And there are some student fees, but they’re generally minimal except for the first year and during some of the medical school years. Yeah. So that’s kind of the overall trajectory in terms of finances in the program.

An MD/PhD is Not Just a Free MD

07:37 Emily R: Yeah. And I think at first blush, this seems like, What? Like you get a free MD and you get paid while you’re there, like during both the med school part and the PhD part? That’s incredible! What a deal. Can you tell us why that might be the first reaction, but it shouldn’t be the only reaction to how this program is funded?

07:59 Emily P: Yeah, so it’s definitely a valid reaction, and I think it can be a very good deal, but really only if you like research a lot. Because it’s a very long program, it’s eight years. So the way that I thought about it even going into it is that I more compare it financially to an MD program where you would be funding the MD out of pocket. And so the MD career trajectory will be essentially four years earlier than an MD/PhD’s. So, if you think about what an MD might be making in the four last years of their career, because that would be to assume they might have a more extended career by four years, it’s probably only about maybe a year or two worth of salaries of debt that they take on for this. And more with interest, because that can be a big thing depending on your specialty. But essentially, I say that I pay in time and not money for my MD degree. Just because of the opportunity costs of not having those extra four years of the career. And for that reason, I definitely wouldn’t suggest doing an MD/PhD just because it seems like an awesome deal. You should really like the research, both the research and the human clinical side, because both of these training programs can be fairly brutal. So, definitely want to consider that.

09:35 Emily R: I really like that you noted in that comparison that what we’re really talking about is, in a sense, a four-year shorter career, possibly. So like it’s those end, you know, the last four years of salary that is the difference rather than, you know, your residency salary or whatever you’d be doing in the, you know, most immediately post-degree. But I wonder, and I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, is like playing around with like the compound interest effect on this because you know, it sort of cuts both ways. Because one, if you did the MD instead of the MD/PhD, you again would be out four years earlier and you can get compound interest working for you earlier from your like big MD salary. And of course you’re paying off your debt as well. Versus during the PhD, maybe you can only invest a little bit, but you do have that stipend coming in.

Think of Yourself as an Adult with a Job, Not as a Student

10:18 Emily R: So some early investment is possible, we know of course the massive time value of money. So I don’t know, it cuts both ways, but I think it’d be really, really interesting if someone, for their own situation, you know, played around with those numbers and saw that. But I really like that you emphasized, you know, we’re going to talk about finances today, but in terms of the motivation to do an MD/PhD program, you really want to get both of these degrees and love what you’re doing the whole time. So, you know, you were just mentioning how of course you have this history that you told us at the beginning with like being into like a music and you mentioned being on the swim team, and of course you really want to have both the neuroscience PhD as well as the MD. So what do you think, like, what is your outlook on maintaining your life outside of just being an MD student or a PhD student? And do you think that’s different at all from maybe another PhD student?

11:13 Emily P: Yeah. So I’d say that I’m not sure if it’s necessarily too different from MD and PhD. However, given the length of the program, I think that it’s very important to kind of think of yourself as being an adult with a regular job and not a student. It would be very difficult to postpone this mentality shift for eight years. And I think that’s something that could be valuable for both MD and PhD, but it’s especially important to take that into consideration. So, I consider my program to be a full-time job with my stipend as my income. And then that just helps you to act both in better financial interests, but also able to continue to live your life and not put it on pause because of this program. And so, since it’s such a long program, I would say that you want to secure your support network as soon as possible when you get to med school and especially because med school ramps up really fast and can be very difficult.

12:28 Emily P: There are a few kind of, I guess, areas of personal capita that I would suggest getting up and running as soon as you get there. Or as soon as you can. Academically, I’d say you want to make friends with MDs and MD/PhDs because it’s good to have a group of people to study with. And you might also want to talk to people who are currently in your graduate program that you’re thinking about joining to make sure that’s the program you want to do. And then also establish relationships with your advisory dean and your MSTP or MD/PhD director. And so those are all things that I guess are related academically, but also can be very helpful in your outside life. Also, you want to do the adult thing of setting up your support network for personal health.

Your Health and Support Network

13:25 Emily P: So the two most important thing would be to establish a relationship with a primary care doctor as soon as possible. Even if you don’t necessarily need them, just like make an appointment to like get your prescriptions transferred. And then also find a therapist in the community. I think that every PhD and MD student, or MD/PhD student, should have a therapist because oftentimes, if you actually need a therapist, it’ll take months to get, so you want to find a therapist, maybe you just meet with them every month. And then if something comes up, you can meet with them more often. And then set up the other auxiliary things, dentist, eye doctor, and things like that. So, you want to make sure you’re doing the regular adult things that you should be doing to make sure you that you get support in the program.

14:16 Emily P: And then moving to some other outside of medicine is that you want to make sure you’re maintaining your relationships with friends and family that you already have. If you’re living near your family, which I am, make sure you have boundaries and they know when you can talk to them and see them. And set up regular phone calls and visits and you know, plan to see friends in other cities if you want a vacation. And then finally, you should maintain and pursue potentially additional hobbies outside your med school, graduate school training. Personally, I joined a masters swim team, which is just adults swimming, and it’s really fun. And I made a lot of friends there. I go to a lot of Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra concerts. There are really great tickets for that. And I also sing karaoke. So those are some of my hobbies that I do. And most people have their own kind of hobbies that they do. Two of my previous housemates, they both had their martial arts, horseback riding, and volunteering through religion. So I think it’s very important to kind of set up that support network and then including your hobbies and relationships.

Time Management Approach

15:36 Emily R: The other thing I wanted to follow up on was that, you know, you described that your attitude towards your graduate program is that it’s a full-time job and you’re being paid this stipend for your full-time job. Does full-time job to you mean 40 hours per week? Because definitely you’ve mentioned a lot of great stuff like that you do outside of work. So yeah. I’m just wondering, like what your sort of overall time management approach is.

16:00 Emily P: Yeah. So I think it honestly depends on what stage you’re at. The MD, the whole thing is probably going to be more than 40 hours a week because you’re studying a lot and that really can kind of cut into the outside time. However, I found that you just have to, as long as it’s not like interfering with like required activities and things, you just have to put that time in your schedule, like try to make it in the evening and carve it out, which is what I typically do for things like swimming. I know that on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I’m going to be at swimming and I’m not going to be studying. So you kind of have to make time, if makes sense. And same with like going to the Rochester Philharmonic, you have to carve out that time for yourself. In grad school, it’s definitely a bit more flexible. And I’d say like, I probably never work the same amount of hours like in consecutive weeks. It always fluctuates. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. It depends on deadlines and when I’m running participants and stuff like that. But it’s a similar thing. Like you have to prioritize your hobbies, your relationships, and put them in the calendar and kind of treat them like you would any other commitment.

17:25 Emily R: Yeah. Not dissimilar from a good strategy for your finances as well. Get the big, important things in there in first and kind of let everything else fall around the margins.

Commercial

17:36 Emily R: Emily here, for a brief interlude. This announcement is for prospective and first-year graduate students. My colleague, Dr. Toyin Alli of The Academic Society, offers a fantastic course just for you called Grad School Prep. The course teaches you Toyin’s four-step grad boss method, which is to uncover grad school secrets, transform your mindset, up-level your productivity, and master time management. I contributed a very comprehensive webinar to the course titled, “Set Yourself Up for Financial Success in Graduate School.” It explores the financial norms of grad school and the financial secrets of grad school. I also give you a plan for what to focus on in your finances each season of the year that you apply to and into your first year of grad school. If this all sounds great to you, please register at theacademicsociety.com/emily for Toyin’s free masterclass on what to expect in your first semester of grad school and the three big mistakes that keep grad students stuck in a cycle of anxiety, overwhelm, and procrastination. You’ll also learn more about how to join Grad School Prep, if you’d like to go a step further. Again, that’s theacademicsociety.com/E M I L Y for my affiliate link for the course. Now, back to our interview.

Role of Finances in Choosing University of Rochester

19:03 Emily R: Let’s talk a little bit more about the money part of it. What role did finances play in your choice of University of Rochester, in particular over perhaps other programs you were admitted to?

19:13 Emily P: So I would say, I guess aside from like kind of the overall picture of paying in time and not money, I definitely chose MD/PhD, I guess I would consider for the right reasons because I really like clinical and research. And I was a bit anxious about taking out a lot of loans for medical school. So this route definitely helped me. But just to reiterate, that’s not the primary reason. I definitely applied to programs that were more in low- to mid-cost of living. I come from kind of a rural town. So like, I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in a big city anyways. But I definitely was looking at places that were a little more, not necessarily rural, but smaller cities. And I guess I chose Rochester, I’m a bit biased here because most of my family is here. And so I was really excited to go to Rochester because of that. But I also got really lucky that it was in a very like low- to mid-cost of living city in Rochester. Yeah, so that’s kind of why I really wanted to come to Rochester, but I say like, you should definitely talk to people who were looking at a lot of other places because I definitely was biased by the family a fair amount.

20:42 Emily R: Yeah, that’s definitely fair. I think you mentioned earlier, your stipend around $30,000 per year. Do MSTP programs vary a lot like with cost of living, or are they in a pretty tight range?

20:58 Emily P: That’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure. I think when I was looking, most of them were around there, but since I didn’t look at some of the higher cost-of-living cities, I’m not sure that they actually increase it all that much for the higher cities. But I wouldn’t quote me on that because I actually didn’t see them. But I think it also might be standardized if they get NIH funding as well. So usually the websites are pretty open about that. But that’s definitely something I would calculate, the cost of living, if there’s some place you really want to live and make sure it’s high enough for you. There are ways to increase it, like getting an F30 grant. Well, I guess it depends on your school. Usually they’ll bump it up a little bit as kind of a reward for getting the grant, but yeah. It really depends on the program.

Financial Goals Pursued with MD/PhD Stipend

21:55 Emily R: So $30,000 a year is a decent stipend, and I think in Rochester goes fairly okay. So, I know you’ve been sort of intentionally working on your finances for the last couple of years and learning a lot. And so what are the financial goals that you’ve been able to pursue with that stipend?

22:14 Emily P: Yeah, so I feel like I live very comfortably on this stipend. I’ve been a very avid saver most of my life. So a lot of my personal finance work has been on instead of trying to like cut back on expenses, it’s more like how do I allocate extra expenses and also transition my money to be able to spend it towards things that I actually enjoy. And maybe still I go with my natural instinct of saving on things that aren’t as important to me. And, yeah, so I would say that actually initially my goal when I started the program is that I wanted to house hack and buy a house. Because I didn’t know that much about personal finance other than like kind of budget and I was saving a lot. But I wanted to house hack.

23:16 Emily P: But then I kind of got into the first few years of medical school and it was kind of crazy and I realized that being a landlord would kind of be a lot of work. And so I kind of shifted away from that. Especially after living in a house with five people during COVID because we had some partners move in temporarily. I decided that I just wanted to live with my partner and not have housemates. So that’s kind of the icing on the cake in what I decided that I didn’t want to house hack anymore. So I decided that I wanted, since if I was just living with my partner, it would be more of a personal residence. And so many finance books that I read say that your house is not an asset, it’s a liability. So I was like, alright, I think that I want to actually buy assets and make some investment decisions instead since I wasn’t going to be house hacking.

24:24 Emily R: So interesting. I’m really glad you brought up this perspective because I am very enthusiastic about house hacking, but I have never done it and I’ve never been in like the position that I was considering it. And I think I, like you, now that I am at a new homeowner, yeah, there’s a lot of work that just goes into owning a home. Not even adding like the landlord aspect on top of it. So, you really have to be up for that. And it can be worth it. Like, especially if you’re, you know, let’s say in your financial situation, you’re looking at house hacking versus having like a side job. Well, the house hack can be your side job and that can make sense, but you have to have the time to be able to do that stuff. So I think that makes so much sense for you and especially, COVID kind of like changing the equation on this.

25:04 Emily R: Like yeah, how many people do you want to live with? And if it’s only going to be two and yeah, house hacking, like that’s actually one of the reasons why I love talking about house hacking. Because I kind of feel like anybody who’s in the position where they could buy a house in graduate school, house hacking makes it like a slam dunk, good financial decision. Whereas it’s more iffy, you know, if it’s really just your personal residence, as you were just saying, you know, you can get lucky or unlucky with the housing market in that case. I know that’s probably what would have happened for me living in Durham had I not house hacked, which I didn’t end up buying overall. But anyway, I’m just really glad to have your perspective on that. Yeah. Living with six other people during COVID sounds like a lot.

25:44 Emily P: Yeah. And also, just, I guess the opposite perspective is that actually my two housemates that I was living with, they actually went on to buy a house. And one of them is house hacking. So it’s definitely something that MD/PhD students can do. They do house hack a lot. But it was just something that I decided not to, and I’m very happy and we live in an apartment complex and when something breaks, the landlords come right away, or the maintenance people come right away, and I’m very happy with that.

Tracking Cashflow, Investing, and Saving

26:17 Emily R: And so when you mentioned that you’re buying actual assets instead of the combo asset liability, does that mean you’re like investing for retirement or investing in other ways? Like what are you doing?

26:29 Emily P: Yeah, so I have a couple different areas. So I’d say like personal finance and investing has kind of been like a hobby that I was somewhat interested in before COVID, but during COVID it’s actually become a lot bigger and I’ve had a lot of time to do some reading and listening to podcasts and stuff. And so, I mean the first step to all this, I would say, was definitely budgeting or tracking your cashflow if you hate the budget word. And I take a very hands-on approach to this because I think it’s really fun. And I kind of try to make it a game. And so, like knowing your cashflow is the first thing. Otherwise, before I knew exactly what my cashflow, even though I knew where my money was going, I didn’t know how much I had to spend for the future and such.

27:25 Emily P: That’s given me a lot of freedom to put the money towards where I actually wanted to go. And oh, I also started tracking my net worth, which is inspired by your emails. So that’s been fun. So those are like really the basic building blocks before anyone should start investing. So I just want to say that I did those first. So yeah, but in terms of what I’m actually investing in, I do have a Roth IRA, and I love my Roth IRA. And I learned, I think from your blog actually, that I was able to open one, and I was very excited about that. And yeah, it’s been a little bit of a challenge. I kind of try to challenge myself to fund that every year fully. Before this, I did have some cash, because I had a lot saved up for the potential house.

28:20 Emily P: So I put it in a regular brokerage account. Some stocks, mostly ETFs. And so I am in the process of kind of trying to fund the Roth IRA with my money that’s incoming. And then when I can’t make the limit, to supplement it with a brokerage account. And then finally I’m saving for some of my future expenses. Medical school can, some parts of it, can be very expensive, such as standardized tests and residency applications. I was actually told to save like $10,000 for residency application. So, and it might be changed a little bit because it’s potentially virtual, but we don’t know if that’s changing. Saving for a new used car, and for paying off student loans, which I chose to defer until after. And it’s definitely tricky to find the right vessel for this savings goal for like about three to five years out. And I actually did something that was maybe a little bit not in the normal, it’s like a specially designed whole life insurance banking policy. And I won’t go into the details, but it’s definitely something that’s a bit controversial in personal finance, but I researched it heavily and it made sense for me, but I definitely would not recommend unless you like fully research it and alternatives for that. But those are the kind of major places where my cashflow is going, the Roth IRA, and the savings for future expenses.

29:50 Emily R: Yeah. Those sound like incredible goals. And yeah, $6K to a Roth IRA per year, either out of cashflow or out of your existing investments is incredible, setting yourself up. Yeah, I hadn’t heard about, or I hadn’t thought about using a whole life policy for sort of shortish, mediumish term expenses. I assume you’re then going to borrow against the policy to do that. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. We won’t go into it, but like, as you said, there’s not really a good like solution out there for that kind of timeframe. So it’s not surprising to me that you would like, you know, kind of get creative with that.

Career Paths for MD/PhDs

30:23 Emily R: You know, you just mentioned like doing a residency, and I’m wondering is a residency definitely the next step for all MD/PhDs? And, you know, overall, what is the career path for MD/PhDs in comparison to only MDs or only PhDs?

30:38 Emily P: That’s a great question. In certain situations, like interviews and things like that, it’s definitely the next step. But there are a lot of other options out there. But I mean, generally, you’re going to need a residency if you’re wanting to practice clinically at all. Even if you decide to do a full-time like academic lab, if you want to have any proportion medical, clinical things in your work, you’re going to need to do a residency. And they’re usually four to six years long and they can be pretty intensive depending on the field. Sometimes there are research intensive. So the ideal MD/PhD kind of percentage breakdown, which is somewhat arbitrary, is that you’ll spend 80% running your own lab and 20% in clinical doing clinical work.

31:34 Emily R: And that would be in like an academic or like a hospital setting. Is that right?

31:38 Emily P: Yes. Typically in an academic hospital combined setting. So like a larger institution. I’d say, like that’s not, I mean, I think some people do that. I think it’s a very arbitrary number and it might be very difficult. You might end up working, you know, 150% instead of a hundred percent, which can be difficult, especially if the clinical work can just be like pretty brutal and like kind of time suck your time. So if you do something like that, they say to be very purposeful in like protecting your research time.

The 80/20 Myth

32:20 Emily R: So is that like, so when you’re talking about, okay, so the ideal outcome career for an MD/PhD is this 80% running your own lab, 20% clinical breakdown, but is that like telling a PhD student that their career should be a tenure-track professorship? Like, is it that kind of, I guess what I’m asking is what are the actual job prospects for MD/PhDs coming out of residency to get a position like that? Like what percentage actually get a position like that versus go on to do something else?

32:52 Emily P: I would say, I don’t know the stats, there are definitely like papers on this topic, but I would say, this would be like you do your residency and then you try to get a full tenure-track position with part-clinical time. And I’d say, I think oftentimes people end up doing one or the other. I think it can be very difficult. Sometimes it depends on the field of medicine you go into as well. So it’s really all over the place. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can kind of do whatever you want. There are a lot of options with this degree. So like academia, academic medicine, and clinical are just like two of the, probably most common, fields that people go into. But also there are some options in like industry, particularly, in health tech, I guess pharmaceuticals, but that’s a whole other basket of worms. So yeah, but I’d say that there are there options, but essentially you do have to do that residency, typically. There are some nonclinical roles, but you generally want to do the residency and then, you know, pick full-time clinical or part-time clinical. And then I’d say like more of these other options might come later in your career or might be like a part-time side hustle or things like that.

34:23 Emily R: Yeah, very interesting. I guess I’m just going back to what you said, you know, near the beginning of our conversation was, you know, you’re paying in time and not money. And like, I hope that you all know by the time you get to, you know, choosing a residency, like whether that’s going to play into your future career, because that is a long time and a big salary opportunity cost to spend doing a residency, if it’s not ultimately something that plays into your long-term career plan. So tough decisions. And what about you personally, like, do you want to go for that, like 80/20 academic medicine kind of split or like, what are you thinking?

35:03 Emily P: I personally am more interested in having, so my research right now, even is fairly integrative with clinical and research, so I would like to have more of like a clinical aspect to it, and then do some collaborative research and really use kind of my skills and knowledge as a physician to inform clinical research. And I think that is very doable in my field of like psychiatry or neurology, which is currently two of the options that I’m looking at. But I’m also not a hundred percent sure. I’d say there are like a lot more and more collaborations or collaborative PI labs. I’m not sure I’d want to be like the single PI in the lab, just if I want to maintain clinical. So yeah, I’d say I’m interested in kind of both, but maybe more integrating them. And I also really am interested in health tech things. So maybe I’d be interested in starting kind of my own business or consulting, but that would be later on in my career after I had established myself clinically.

Talk to Upperclassmen for Advice

36:19 Emily R: Yeah. Well, thank you for giving us that peek into your plans. Do you have any go-to resources on finances for MD/PhDs in particular? It’s so niche, I’m wondering if any exist?

36:32 Emily P: So I haven’t come across any yet that are specific to MD/PhDs. It might exist. But I’ve been able to get a lot of what I need out of out of your content, specifically geared towards PhDs, in addition to numerous podcasts and audio books that are in personal finance. I haven’t come across anything that’s specifically geared towards MD/PhDs. I generally get a lot of my advice from talking to upperclassmen, just either casually to find out what they’re doing. I had a neighbor who was an upperclassman nearby and he would give me advice about the program and also sometimes financial things. I guess if there was something I really wasn’t sure about from the MD or MD/PhD perspective, I’d like maybe email someone and ask them specific questions. We also have like, MD/PhD it’s called like a blue book for incoming students with certain things that with many things, including personal finance things. And there are some seminars where you can ask upperclassmen different questions and stuff. So I’d say it’s more by word of mouth from what I’ve seen. However, a lot of the resources geared towards PhDs and just personal finance in general, really applied to the situation of MD/PhDs.

Best Financial Advice for An Early-Career MD/PhD

37:57 Emily R: Yeah, that makes sense. And I love the advice of like, just talk to real people who have been in your shoes a year or two back and have like the real, you know, high-quality information that definitely applies to you. So great, great, great. Do you have any other great advice? What is your best financial advice for another early career MD/PhD student or MD/PhD? Your best financial advice for that person?

38:20 Emily P: I would say my best advice is something I touched on earlier is just shifting your mindset from student to adult. It’s just way too long to consider yourself a student and not start living your life. I’d say that it might be difficult sometimes. So you should try and shut work off after you come home. Whatever hours you may need to work, just like try your best to shut it off and maintain your life outside your graduate program. And I think that if you kind of separate your program and your in your life, to some degree, it’ll help you financially and also help you develop your relationships and your hobbies, and also for maintaining your mental and physical health.

39:07 Emily R: Yes. Fantastic! Thank you so much for telling us that. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective in this interview. It’s been fantastic.

39:15 Emily P: Yeah, great! It’s my pleasure. I’m so happy to be here.

Outtro

39:23 Emily R: Listeners, thank you for joining me for this episode! pfforphds.com/podcast/ is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. On that page are links to all the episodes’ show notes, which include full transcripts and videos of the interviews. There is also a form to volunteer to be interviewed on the podcast. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved! If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, here are 4 ways you can help it grow: 1. Subscribe to the podcast and rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. 2. Share an episode you found particularly valuable on social media, with a email list-serv, or as a link from your website. 3. Recommend me as a speaker to your university or association. My seminars cover the personal finance topics PhDs are most interested in, like investing, debt repayment, and effective budgeting. I also license pre-recorded workshops on taxes. 4. Subscribe to my mailing list at PFforPhDs.com/subscribe/. Through that list, you’ll keep up with all the new content and special opportunities for Personal Finance for PhDs. See you in the next episode, and remember: You don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance… but it helps! The music is “Stages of Awakening” by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archive and is shared under CC by NC. Podcast editing by Lourdes Bobbio and show notes creation by Meryem Ok.

How to Find and Apply for Fellowships (with ProFellow Founder Dr. Vicki Johnson)

September 2, 2019 by Meryem Ok

In this episode, Emily interviews fellowship expert Dr. Vicki Johnson, the founder and director of ProFellow. After completing multiple professional fellowships and her PhD, Vicki decided to help other fellowship seekers do the same by creating the ProFellow database, which now contains more than 1,200 professional and academic fellowships. Vicki relays the best way to find and apply for fellowships and gives excellent advice for making your fellowship application stand out. Winning a fellowship is the best way to increase your stipend or salary as a graduate student or postdoc, and Vicki shares from her experience some of the other career benefits that fellowships bring.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

  • ProFellow.com
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Speaking
  • Personal Finance for PhDs: Help Out

fellowship application

Teaser

00:00 Vicki: At the end of the day, these organizations that are outside of the university are funding fellowships as a way to further their social impact mission. So make sure you understand what is the mission of the fellowship organization, why are they funding your research or would want to. Make sure you tie your story to their mission, how you’re going to further their mission. That will make you a more competitive candidate.

Introduction

00:25 Emily: Welcome to the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast, a higher education in personal finance. I’m your host, Dr. Emily Roberts. This is season four, episode three and today my guest is Dr. Vicki Johnson, the founder and director of ProFellow, the leading online resource for academic and professional fellowships. Vicki herself did four professional fellowships in addition to her funded PhD. Vicki and I discussed the best way to find and apply for academic fellowships, and Vicki gives excellent advice on how to boost your applications’ chances of success. Without further ado, here’s my interview with Dr. Vicki Johnson.

Will You Please Introduce Yourself Further?

01:06 Emily: Welcome to the podcast. Today, I am joined by Dr. Vicki Johnson, who’s the founder and director of ProFellow, which is a fantastic fellowships database and just amazing resource for graduate students and postdocs and anyone pursuing fellowships kind of in any way. Vicki and I are going to be talking today about everything fellowships. How do you find them? How do you apply for them? How do you win them? Because she is really the premier expert on this topic in our space. So Vicki, thank you so much for joining us today.

01:41 Vicki: Thank you for having me!

01:42 Emily: Can you tell us just a couple words about your background? You know, you have a PhD and how you got started with ProFellow.

01:50 Vicki: Sure. I actually started out in the fellowship world as a professional. I did four professional fellowships in the field of policy and I did some in the U.S. and some abroad. As I was progressing through my career, I did my Masters and then ultimately did my PhD, which was actually just a serendipitous thing that I did while I was on a professional fellowship. Then I had a major career transition about five years ago and decided to teach other people about how to find and win fellowships through ProFellow. And now I’m fully focused on that as my thing. I love fellowships, and I’m excited to tell people more about them.

How Do You Define “Fellowship”?

02:27 Emily: Yeah, it sounds like you have a ton of personal experience as well as your extensive professional experience. So yeah, let’s get started with that– with a pretty basic definition. What is a fellowship? Because that term can mean a lot of different things depending on who you’re talking to. So how do you define it?

02:45 Vicki: So for the purpose of our website, we sort of decided that the definition would be “short-term funded opportunities to do something exceptional.” So there’s a lot of funding opportunities, professional development opportunities, graduate school funding opportunities that aren’t necessarily called fellowship and title, but they do provide funding. They are time-limited, so they’re usually anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of years in length. And they provide you the resources and the network that you typically wouldn’t get in either a job or even just the regular scholarship. So it’s a pretty broad definition. People typically have heard of postdoctoral fellowships or they’ve heard of scholarships and things. But it’s a really very broad definition. So there’s quite a few professionals fellowships and also a whole other world of academic fellowships.

03:36 Emily: Yeah. And so I think today we’re going to be focused mostly on those academic fellowships, the ones that will pay your stipend, maybe pay some tuition and fees, pay your salary if you’re at the postdoc level. But just so people are aware, your site covers much more than that. And in fact, I did a policy fellowship myself after I finished my PhD. It was the, the Mirzayan Fellowship in DC. And that’s something that I wrote about for your site because that fellowship is one among the many others that you cover. But we will be focusing today on those academic fellowships. But just for anyone who’s thinking about another fellowship opportunity, still go back to ProFellow because it’s going to be an amazing resources for you as well. So with these academic fellowships, how do you go about finding them? We’ve all heard probably of the standout one in each of our fields, whatever that is, but there are going to be a whole lot more, too. So how do we go about finding these fellowships?

How to Use ProFellow to Find Fellowships

04:26 Vicki: Well here I’m going to do a big plug for the site profellow.com because we have an enormous database of fellowships at both the professional and academic level. So if you sign up for free to use ProFellow, you can create an account and come in and search our huge database. And within it there are filters. So you can either select fellowships for doctoral study, graduate study, which would include masters programs and postdoctoral research in addition to professional, even summer fellowships for students. You can narrow it down that way and then you can also narrow them down by discipline, your citizenship, years of work experience. I would also say use certain keywords. So let’s say you’re working in conservation. You can use that as a keyword in the database. But for the most part, I tell people to keep their search filters quite broad because there are a lot of fellowships that are multidisciplinary in nature.

05:18 Vicki: So even if it’s not specifically a conservation fellowship, there could be a whole range of fellowships that you can do a conservation related research project, or dissertation research or whatever, with the fellowship because it might be a broader social sciences fellowship or STEM fellowship. So keep your search broad and take the time to look through. We purposely made the listings so that they’re really brief and easy to skim and you can bookmark opportunities. And then you can also from the listing go to the website to learn more. And honestly, I only say this because it’s true. We are a better place to look for fellowships than, say, on Google. If you Google these things, you’ll come up with all sorts of stuff that may or may not be relevant to what you’re looking for. And it’s very difficult to find fellowships on Google or even just through word of mouth. So, use the website. It’s free, and it’s a great way to also find out about new opportunities that are coming up every year.

How Do You Maintain the ProFellow Database?

06:12 Emily: Yeah, thank you so much for that. I’ve been referring to ProFellow for many years as a key database for all of this, and it’s exciting to hear what all you do. I’m actually wondering how you find all these fellowships. Are you well-known enough that these new programs just e-mail you when they have something new coming up, or how do you maintain this database?

06:31 Vicki: Oh, good question. Well, back in the day, nobody knew who we were. But now that we’ve been around since 2011, we have a brand name in the fellowship industry. And honestly, some of the larger categories of fellowships– like, let’s say you’re Googling journalism fellowships or mid-career fellowships or postdoctoral fellowships– ProFellow will rank some of our articles at the top of the list. There are other keywords that we’re still fighting for to get to the top of the list. But if you’re listening to this and you’ve heard of us, you’ll see that. And we’re also very active in the fellowship industry. I just came back from a conference in DC, the Impact Fellowships Summit. So, our name is growing. We’re still a bit skewed toward, U.S. Citizens, U.S. Students, or people coming to the U.S. in terms of what funding is out there. But we are also growing globally. So we are getting more and more fellowships for non-U.S. citizens, international students, or people from other countries going to non-U.S. countries. So, it’s growing. So, there are more and more things. The more you share us with your friends and your colleagues and your professors, the more well-known we will be and even more fellowships we will list.

Applying for Academic Fellowships

07:40 Emily: Yeah, wonderful. Okay, so we have a grad student or a postdoc or an aspiring one of those categories who wants to win a fellowship. What’s the application process like for these academic fellowships?

07:54 Vicki: Yes, well, if you have never applied to a fellowship before, you’ll see that actually it can be similar to applying to graduate school. Usually, there’s a personal statement, recommendation letters, short answers that you have to respond to. In many cases, for the academic or research-related fellowships, you might even have to put in a research proposal. That could be anything from a really brief research proposal to something that’s really long and intense. So, it’s different for every fellowship. I say, get started early. The first thing you should identify is: what do you need to include in the application? I think if you’re in graduate school, you’ll be used to this process of writing a personal statement and talking about your goals, what you want to achieve in your research, so that experience will help you as you pursue the fellowships.

08:42 Emily: So I liked that you drew parallels between the process of applying to graduate school and the process of applying for fellowships. In fact, sometimes even the timing of those things can come together. Right? Do you find that fall is a heavy fellowship season or is it kind of spread out around the year?

08:58 Vicki: Oh yeah, that’s a very good question. Yeah, typically it’s just like the graduate school process where it’s based on the academic year. So you do want to look for fellowships as early as possible. Deadlines tend to fall anywhere between October and January. That’s kind of a typical, what we call, fellowship season. And so if you’re looking for funding, it’s often not very easy to get a fellowship that’s going to fund your next semester right away or even in a few weeks or a few months. Usually, you’re looking a year out. So that’s why, let’s say you’re entering your coming year– your academic year. The fellowships that you apply to this fall typically will fund your following academic year. So yes, keep that in mind. It’s an important kind of timeline that people should be aware of when they’re looking for fellowships.

How to Get Ahead of Fellowship Deadlines

09:42 Emily: Yeah. This is definitely something you need to plan ahead for. Can you tell me a little bit more about, not necessarily the timeline about the fellowship applications cause presumably they just have a due date, but all the various components that could go into an application. Different kinds of essays, letters, just stuff that you need to be working on. Like what do you need work on well in advance of these deadlines?

10:03 Vicki: Well, I think it’s really important if you’re looking for funding for academic research, say your dissertation, to do field work and that sort of thing. A lot of times what the fellowship organizations want to know is they want to know that you’re going to be successful. So when they fund you, they want to know that your project can be successfully completed in the time period of the fellowship with the resources available with the funding available.

10:25 Vicki: So if you’re applying for, say, like a summer fellowship that is only three months in length. That’s not enough time to do your entire dissertation. You’re probably just doing one element of it. So make sure that your research proposal, if that’s part of your application, really reflects what the fellowship is offering and what can be accomplished in that. Because feasibility is very important. It doesn’t matter how great your ideas is; if it’s not feasible, it won’t make it to the next stage. And in the personal statement too, they want to see more about why you’re passionate about your research topic. What are your longterm goals? Often people forget to put in what their career goals are or what they’re going to do after the fellowship. That’s really important. Make sure to include those because at the end of the day, these organizations that are outside of the university are funding fellowships as a way to further their social impact mission. So make sure you understand what is the mission of the fellowship organization, why are they funding your research or would want to. Make sure you tie your story to their mission, how you’re going to further their mission. That will make you a more competitive candidate. So those are, I would say, the main things to include.

Commercial

11:29 Emily: Emily here for a brief interlude. Through my business, I provide seminars and webinars on personal finance for graduate students, postdocs, and other early career PhDs for universities, institutes and conferences, associations, et cetera. I offer seminars that cover a wide range of personal finance topics and others that take a deep dive into the financial topics that matter most to PhDs like taxes, investing, career transitions, and frugality. If you are interested in having me speak to your group or recommending me to a potential host, you can find more information and ways to contact me at pfforphds.com/speaking that’s p f f o r p h d s.com/speaking. Now back to the interview.

More Advice for Fellowship Applicants

12:18 Emily: Yeah, so it sounds like there are some of these elements, you know, essays that you can reuse much of for several different applications that you might have. But some things are definitely going to have to be tailored to the specific organization.

12:30 Vicki: Absolutely. My mantra is that the amount of effort that you put into your application directly correlates with your likelihood of success. So, I know people don’t want to hear that, “Aw, man, I have to put a lot of time into my application,” because on top of it you’re studying and you’re working, you’re doing other things. But it’s true that when you’re focusing on an application, start it as early as possible because then you can break out times on your calendar to be able to focus just on the application and also make sure to tie in your professors, your mentors. They’ve been doing this a long time. Many of them have won multiple fellowships, multiple grants and funding awards. Don’t do this in a little silo by yourself. Make sure you tell your advisors, your professors that you’re applying for the fellowships because they could have some great insights. They may even be connected to the fellowship in some way you might not be aware of. So, be sure to reach out for advice from those groups, too.

How to Stand Out as a Fellowship Applicant

13:29 Emily: Yeah, we’re definitely getting into some good advice here for fellowship applicants. These fellowships presumably get hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of applications. What’s going to really make a candidate stand out and make a fellowship application look very, very strong?

13:48 Vicki: Yeah. The two main things, especially with the academic research, if you are applying to a fellowship that is being funded by a foundation, a nonprofit government agency, NGO, whatever that is, make sure that you understand the mission of the organization. I think I mentioned this already, but a lot of people sort of skip over this part. They are so wrapped up in explaining their research and why they want to do it that they don’t really tie why their research aligns with the mission of the organization. So it’s very, very, very important that you touch on that mission. They may not ask you how you feel about their mission. They may not ask you how it ties to their mission. But when you think about the other group, the other person–the investors, as I like to call it–they’re investing in you. Make sure you make a really clear reason as to why they should invest in you because they have a purpose for the fellowship and you have a purpose for your research and you’ve got to make sure they tie together.

14:47 Emily: Yeah. Excellent. Any other advice for making an outstanding fellowship application, but let’s say also just an outstanding fellowship applicant? What can you do in your life that will go on your CV or that people will be able to write about in your letters that will help you stand out?

Fellowships: More than Just the Fellowship

15:05 Vicki: You know, I think some people get a little bit intimidated by the fellowship process. Like you said, there’s hundreds, thousands of applications and it can be really disappointing to get a rejection letter from a fellowship that you worked really hard on the application on. But just keep in mind that the effort that you put in, your professors and your supervisors are watching as you do this. And so even if you’re rejected, I’m telling you, there’s something extra that you get. I don’t know what the right word is, that will help you as you go further in your career. So it’s not all for not if you don’t get into the fellowship. But also, if you do get into a fellowship, make sure to take advantage of the wider resources that the fellowship offers.

15:49 Vicki: There’s usually an alumni network. They’re connected to high-level organizations and leaders in your field, both in the U.S. And globally. Take full advantage of every opportunity that the fellowship provides beyond just the funding that they’re going to give you. Because we all know that when it comes to career tracks that, these days to get a job, you have to be in the know. You have to know somebody, you have to be an influencer, you have to have personal connections. And these are things that are very valuable that you can get out of the fellowship. But also, these personal connections that you make are also very valuable when you’re applying to fellowships, too. So as you’re applying, reach out to alumni, reach out to professors and mentors, get as much advice as you can. All of this, little bit incrementally, adds to your success long-term.

How Often Should I Apply for Fellowships?

16:37 Emily: Yeah, I’m really glad you brought up the other benefits of winning a fellowship aside from the funding itself. So I had a friend in graduate school who was a Hertz Fellow. I was blown away by the number of networking events and opportunities to meet potential employers that that fellowship provided. It was truly outstanding, and I don’t know that there are that many others that go to that degree. But certainly as you said, there are alumni networks that you can be connected to. Really, it is another way of networking. A very, very good, strong networking connection to have won a fellowship. One other thing I wanted to ask you about: another guest that I just had on who was a fellowship applicant said something along the lines of, “it’s sort of a numbers game.” You just need to apply to a lot of stuff and hopefully, here and there you’ll win something. But really, as you said, each fellowship application takes a good amount of time dedicated to it. Would you say that people should be applying to a few fellowships every year? Not necessarily like full, “it’s going to pay everything” fellowships, but just some kind of award that they could go up for.

17:42 Vicki: To be honest, I’m not really in the mind frame of the numbers game. I’ve heard people say that. I’ve heard multi-award winners say that. As as I said, I have won multiple fellowships, but for each of them I was sort of applying for them one at a time. When you’re applying to graduate school or looking for graduate funding, often you do have to apply for a few at a time in the hopes that you get one of them. But I don’t know necessarily that it’s a numbers game where you just throw out a million applications and hope that one sticks, because I do think that approach could also distract you a little bit from really putting in the focus that you need to create a strong application. I would say just make sure that you’re a good fit for the programs that you’re applying to.

18:23 Vicki: If it really is a stretch, is your research actually furthering the mission of the organization? If it’s really a stretch, it might not really be worth applying to. Whereas if you find two or three fellowships that you think you’d be a really good candidate for, go for all three, because it will be worthwhile. And I should also say people should look into summer fellowships too, which are just kind of brief summertime fellowships that are specifically for students. Some of them are professional in nature. Some of them are for academic research as well. But even those little summer fellowships give you those professional networks and experiences that you can’t get otherwise and they’re very, very good for your post-graduation career goals.

Final Advice for Fellowship Applicants: Be Yourself

19:06 Emily: Yeah. Thank you for your insight on that. I’m going to ask you a little more about ProFellow in a moment, but just before we get there, any final words of advice for fellowship applicants?

19:17 Vicki: Oh, just be yourself, too. I think people worry too much about telling the organization what they want to hear. And I do teach people about the social psychology of really understanding the mission and making sure that you link your work to that. But at the same time, to be your authentic self is really valuable. There are people reading these applications. They’re not robots. They’re people. So, tell your story, your authentic story, and really be yourself. And if you get thrown a hard question, answer it as honestly as you can. If it was meant to be, it will be.

Additional Resources at ProFellow

19:51 Emily: Okay. So tell us a little bit more about ProFellow. You’ve talked about the database a little bit already, but I know you have a lot more stuff going on aside from just, this is where we can search for fellowships.

20:00 Vicki: Sure. At profellow.com, we do have this huge database of funding opportunities that you can search. We also do articles featuring fellows and ask them about their fellowship experience and their application tips. So it’s a great place to hear what fellowship alumni say about how they made their application stand out, what they did to get above the hundreds of thousands of applicants. We also do listicles, we do articles. Specifically, “10 fellowships in policy,” “25 dissertation fellowships.” So we have a lot of resources that help you find the fellowships and get the tips. We also have workshops, usually on a monthly basis, on everything from creating a great personal statement to creating an exceptional research proposal.

20:45 Vicki: So if you’re on our mailing list, you’ll be alerted to those things as well. And actually, next week and two weeks from now I’m doing a Fulbright applicant mastermind for people that are applying for the international Fulbright awards. So that’s something that if you’re considering as an enrolled student for either your field work or just to have an international experience, a Fulbright is something you can consider. But yeah, we have all sorts of stuff. We even have ProFellow academy, which is another platform for free advising. So you can ask questions, connect with fellowship alumni, have office hours. So yeah, we’re just chockfull of resources. Most of it’s free. So, sign up, get on our mailing list and then you will have access and also get alerts about new fellowship opportunities.

How to Connect with ProFellow

21:26 Emily: Yeah, that sounds amazing. I’m actually trying to think, “oh, is there any fellowship that I could apply for? Does that fit in my life right now?” One of those professional fellowships that you mentioned. So profellow.com, is that the best place to go? Or are you on social? Any other contact information you want to share?

21:41 Vicki: Oh, yes. You’ll find us also on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. But really just go to profellow.com. That’s the place to be. Sign up right on the homepage and that’ll get you right into the database. You can also search our site for all the other great stuff. Be on the lookout for our biweekly newsletter, ProFellow Insider.

22:00 Emily: Yeah. Thank you so much, Vicki for joining me on the podcast today and sharing your expertise with us.

22:06 Vicki: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Outtro

22:08 Emily: Listeners, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. Pfforphds.com/podcast is the hub for the Personal Finance for PhDs podcast. There, you can find links to all the episode show notes, a form to volunteer to be interviewed, and a way to join the mailing list. I’d love for you to check it out and get more involved. If you want to support the show and my business, please go to pfforphds.com/helpout. There are plenty of ways to do so without laying out any of your own money. See you in the next episode! And remember, you don’t have to have a PhD to succeed with personal finance, but it doesn’t hurt. The music is Stages of Awakening by Podington Bear from the free music archive and is shared under CC by NC.

Why It Matters How You Are Paid

October 18, 2017 by Emily

If you look across a sample of graduate students receiving stipends within any given field, you will find that they have quite similar day-to-day activities: taking or teaching classes, researching, writing articles or chapters, applying for funding, etc. However, behind the stipends that allow these students to engage in their studies are two very different types of sources, which the student’s tax forms reveal. (This distinction and the tax-related details herein are for graduate students in the US.) Whether a student has one type of funding or another has implications for his taxes, access to retirement accounts, and possibly university benefits.

A version of this article first appeared on GradHacker.

The two types of pay that provide stipends to graduate students are ‘compensatory’ and ‘non-compensatory.’ Compensatory pay is given in exchange for work. Typically, this work is in the form of an assistantship – research, teaching, or graduate. Non-compensatory pay is given as an award, and there is (according to the IRS) no work requirement for receiving it. Typically, this award is in the form of a fellowship or participating in a training grant. (Scholarships that go toward paying tuition, fees, and/or health insurance premiums are another form of non-compensatory pay.)

why it matter how you are paid

The type of pay that is behind a graduate student’s stipend potentially affects several aspects of her finances, depending on the university’s policies.

1) The tax forms generated by each type of pay differ. Students with compensatory pay will receive a W-2 in January. Students with non-compensatory pay will see their pay listed on, depending on the university’s policies, a 1099-MISC in box 3, a 1098-T in box 5 (probably summed with the scholarships received), or an unofficial courtesy letter. It is also possible that students with non-compensatory pay will receive no additional notification at tax time. Despite these different reporting mechanisms, a graduate student will report both types of pay in line 7 of his 1040 (with “SCH” denoted next to the line to indicate non-compensatory pay).

2) Graduate students receiving compensatory pay will have the opportunity to have income tax withheld from their stipends, while graduate students receiving non-compensatory pay may or may not, depending on the university’s policy. If students receiving non-compensatory pay do not have the option to have income tax withheld, they may have the responsibility of paying quarterly estimated tax.

3) With rare exceptions, graduate students cannot elect to contribute to retirement accounts at their universities. Therefore, graduate students who wish to save for retirement inside a tax-advantaged account typically opt to contribute to an Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA). However, only compensatory pay (aka ‘taxable compensation’ or ‘earned income’) is eligible to be contributed to an IRA. Graduate students who receive only non-compensatory pay in the course of a calendar year (and are not married to a person with compensatory pay) are not eligible to contribute to an IRA in that year (though they can still save for retirement).

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4) Full-time graduate students typically do not pay FICA tax on their stipends, but the reason for this is different between the two types of pay. Graduate students with compensatory pay enjoy a student exemption to FICA tax, whereas non-compensatory pay is not subject to FICA tax in the first place. This distinction is important if graduate students ever become predominantly viewed as employees rather than students, which sometimes occurs in the summer when they are not enrolled in classes. In that situation, they might lose their FICA exemptions temporarily and have to pay additional tax.

5) The benefits that universities extend to students may differ based on their status. Graduate students receiving non-compensatory pay are unambiguously students in the eyes of the university. Graduate students receiving compensatory pay are both students and employees, and universities have varying views on which half of that balance is dominant. In some cases, when graduate students are considered employees, different or additional benefits may be extended to them that graduate students who are only students do not receive, such as union membership, childcare subsidies, and pensions.

While graduate students receiving compensatory and non-compensatory pay likely have very similar roles within the university, you can see that the IRS and the universities draw a number of distinctions between the groups that become important at some points in a graduate student’s career. If you are unsure which type of pay you are currently receiving or received earlier in the calendar year, you can either wait to see which kind of tax form you receive (W-2 for compensatory, anything else or none for non-compensatory) or inquire within your university’s payroll or financial aid office.

Have you received compensatory, non-compensatory, or both types of pay during graduate school? Was there a time that you realized that your type of pay affected your life materially? Do compensatory and non-compensatory students receive any different benefits at your university?

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