boop-beep boop-beep beep-boop Hello!

Applying won't hurt, you never know.

My take-home was $1700-2100/mo after taxes and fees depending on whether I was teaching that semester (teaching paid less). We were paid just above minimum wage (at the time $15.50/h, CA MW = $15/h) on the basis of 8 h/day, 5 days/wk, 52 wks/y (lmao). Rent split 4 ways was ~~$1500~~ ~$1200 per person, and that was the lowest of anyone I knew. UC Berkeley PhD 2022.

Edit: Checked my admission letter, turns out it was actually $15.50/h. Also got decent health insurance, at least until UCPath fucked it up. Livin' the high life.

When I was working on mine I was making $1800 and rent was only ~$720 for a 2 bed. I think that included pet rent too.

The mental toll however...(Hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance claims later, probably more)

Unfortunately this is still the case in all the universities I know, especially in fine arts and humanity, many of the positions are even unfunded. Many students need to sublease their living room or live in a single bedroom in a house, with shared kitchen and bathroom.

I think many less-well-funded students literally cannot afford a studio or 1B, because the rent will be higher than their salary. Even for CS, math, and bio, the rent of a 1B will still be very close to their stipend.

For reference, I work in the department with the highest pay in my entire school, and my school is an extremely well-funded Tier 1 ~ Tier 2 school in the U.S. I make less than 2k8 after tax, and 1B at the outskirt of my city (40 mins walk to university) cost around 2k2 per month. Of course, an rat-free apartment will cost much more.

Even for these extremely well-funded departments in extremely well-funded schools, almost all of the PhD students are still paid under the living wage. See https://csstipendrankings.org/ .

To summarize: of the 60 schools listed,only 1/3 are paying their CS PhD students a living wage. Schools not paying a living wage include Havard, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, UChicago, and many more.

This is why you see so many grad worker strike in recent years.

I went to a state university and I was paid about $1,000 a month as a graduate student researcher, while living in a $1,700 a month dorm.