Financial Aid

Most graduate students are eligible for financial aid in one form or another. Besides the grants and loans that fund a great deal of undergraduate work, there are fellowships and several forms of assistantships. Also, if you are a foreign student, your government might pay for your schooling in full. Please visit the Financial Aid page on the Center for Graduate Studies website.

Assistantships

Appointments during the academic year may be awarded on either a ½-time or ¼-time basis. Stipends are adjusted annually and current values and additional information for assistantships can be viewed on the web. Values for ¼-time appointments are proportional. Students on assistantships qualify for resident tuition. There are two types of assistantships: research assistantships (RA) and teaching assistantships (TA). Students with teaching assistantships must attend teaching training the week before the fall semester begins or watch the recorded training. Otherwise, both follow the same general rules.

Eligibility: Regular, full time graduate students are eligible for assistantships. Part-time students, dualregistered, 5-year, provisional students, and special graduate students are not eligible for assistantships. To keep your assistantship, you must be registered for and satisfactorily complete twelve credit hours during each semester (three credits in the summer) that you are on support and you must formalize your MS or PhD advisory committee with the Center for Graduate Studies by the end
of your second semester.

Note: normally only courses above 300-level count towards graduate registration and courses such as physical recreation, health and wellness, fine arts, and community education never count toward full-time or contract (twelve credit) registration. You may audit one course per semester (up to three credits or four with a lab included).

Causes for Revocation: You may lose your appointment if you are placed on warning, if you take a leave of absence, or if you do not adequately perform your required duties. On your return from a leave of absence, you must reapply for the assistantship. You may also lose your appointment by exceeding the financial time limits for completion of the requirements for your degree (1.5 times the credits required for your degree). If you have been making good progress and have the support of your advisor and department chair, the Graduate Dean may authorize an extension of support.

Additional Information: To lessen the amount of money required for tuition and fees at the beginning of each semester, graduate assistants may elect to take advantage of the Graduate Deferred Payment Plan. This plan allows eligible students to distribute payment of tuition and some fees over the course of the semester.

After a contract has been prepared, you will sign your contract in the Center for Graduate Studies. If you wish, a copy of the contract will be made available to you so that you can study it before signing. In order to receive your pay, your contract must be signed and submitted to the Center for Graduate Studies. The Payroll Office can provide you with information about how much pay you will receive each pay period and how many pay periods are covered in your contract. Pay will not commence until after all of the paperwork and eligibility requirements have been met.

Work Limits

During your assistantship, you may not have more than one job on campus without the prior consent of your academic advisor, your department chair, and the Dean of Graduate Studies. This is both for your protection and so that more graduate students will be supported. Your work responsibilities (for a half-time appointment) may not exceed 20 hours per week during the time when classes are in session. To qualify for appointments between sessions, you must pre-register for classes for the subsequent semester. Domestic graduate students may hold full-time appointments in the summer. Because of the requirements imposed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, international students who have research appointments, may work full time only between academic sessions. For international students under contract in the summer, the research stipend may be no more than 60% greater than that for similar pay periods during the regular academic year (to cover international students working the extra hours between academic sessions).

Work Authorization

Full-time graduate students may obtain hourly employment from various campus entities. Such employment is accommodated under a Student Work Authorization (SWA). During the fall and spring semesters, students holding a WA must satisfactorily complete at least 9 credits of approved (upper division or graduate) coursework. To work during the summer, students must be taking at least three credit hours in the summer session or be preregistered for the fall courses.  The only exception is made one time, in a student's final semester, with a reduced registration approval from the Center for Graduate Studies.  For information on accommodation for reduced registration for fulltime students, see the section on Course Loads. When classes are in session, students on SWA may work no more than 20 hours per week on all on-campus employment. As one example, if you have a ¼-time RA and a SWA, you may work for only 10 hours on the WA, since you are obligated for 10 hours to your RA. Working more than this maximum may be cause for dismissal from your job.

During the summer, students may have on-campus jobs unrelated to their degrees and avoid the necessity of registration if the benefits of employment are financial and not directly related to their degree progress or research project. A student who is: 1) not in residence for the summer, but is 2) preregistered as a full time student for the fall semester, may qualify for a Student Work Authorization (on-campus employment up to 40 hours per week). The student's academic advisor must indicate that, to the best of their knowledge, the on-campus employment is unrelated to degree progress and that the student will not be using the facilities or staff of the Institute during the summer semester.

Taxes

All students receiving assistantships or otherwise employed on-campus, even students from other countries, are required to pay taxes on their employment. Taxes are automatically deducted from your pay. Domestic students and international students who are resident aliens for tax purposes may qualify for an education tax credit. This tax credit is claimed on the student's federal tax return. This IRS tax credit is not guaranteed to continue in the future and is subject to change in the tax regulation.

Tuition

Those on a one-quarter or one-half time contract (TA or RA) issued by New Mexico Tech will be charged tuition at in-state rates provided that their contract starts before the census date and continues throughout the entire semester. This means students that sign contracts written for less than 10 hours per week or that start after close of registration or end before the end of final exams will be charged tuition based on their legal residence (their home state/country).

Research Assistantships

Research assistantships may be granted for as little as one semester, however, it is more typical for these contracts to be written on either a nine-month (academic year) or a twelve-month (calendar year) basis. If you have a research assistantship, you will be working with a faculty member on a research project. It may be possible to use some portion of the research you do for your assistantship as part of your thesis or dissertation.

If you have a twelve-month assistantship, you are allowed two weeks of vacation a year, if your supervisor approves. Your vacation schedule must be coordinated with your supervisor.

Teaching Assistantships

Teaching assistants work under the supervision of a faculty member. The work assigned to a teaching assistant may include teaching a lab or course, tutoring, preparing a lab, assisting in a lab, or grading. Once assigned to a course, you are responsible for all matters relating to the course, including grading, preparation of lectures and examinations. The stipend is paid from the department's budget and from New Mexico state tuition funds.

Fellowships

There are fellowships available for many graduate programs. A fellowship differs from an assistantship in that the funds are usually not derived from New Mexico Tech. Some fellowships are handled in the same way as assistantships, and some are not; you will have to determine the procedures for your particular appointment from the Center for Graduate Studies and from the department granting the fellowship.

To find out about what fellowships are available, check your department bulletin boards; ask your department chair; and talk to someone at the Center for Graduate Studies. The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program is an excellent example of external fellowships available to support graduate students.

Minority Scholarships

Several fellowships are dedicated to minority students or students from a group that is underrepresented in a particular field. The requirements vary for each scholarship. If you are having trouble finding information on minority fellowships or scholarships, ask for help at the Center for Graduate Studies.

The STEM Communication Fellowship is a 10-hour minority fellowship in which the student serves as a trained STEM Communication specialist to assist all graduate students with communication of STEM content. This fellowship is funded by the New Mexico Minority Scholarship fund. The Fellowship requires 10 hours per week in the STEM Communication position and requires a matching 10-hour research or teaching assistantship match from the student’s home department. Students are normally nominated before the beginning of the fall semester and receive the Fellowship in fall and spring. Preference is given to New Mexico residents who are members of underrepresented minorities (including women in some disciplines).

Loans

Another source of financial aid is through loans. You may apply directly to a bank as an individual for a loan; however, interest rates may be higher than alternatives. As a graduate student, you can apply for Direct Stafford Loans from the Federal Government. To qualify for a Direct Stafford Loan, you must complete your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). You must be registered for at least half the normal course load (6 credits) to be eligible. Under the Direct Stafford Loan program, you may borrow up to $20,500 per year for up to 45 attempted credit hours at the master’s level or 75 hours at the PhD level. You must start repaying your loans six months after you stop going to school. Please visit the Financial Aid Office for more information.

Work-Study

Some students are awarded Federal Work-Study as part of completing the FAFSA. This is a need based program, meaning you qualify based off of your resources and expenses. This program provides matching funds to the school to make it easier for departments to hire students. A student who has work study funding has 75% of their wage subsidized by work study funds and 25% paid from the department’s budget. Once a student has exhausted their work study funding for the academic year, the department must determine if they can continue to employ the student solely from their departmental operating budget.

Federal Work-Study (for permanent residents and U.S. citizens) and New Mexico Work-Study (for New Mexico residents) allotments are similar. Both are need-based, meaning you qualify based on your resources and expenses. Both programs work by granting "matching funds" to the school to make you more attractive to a department or other campus entity who is considering you for employment. Once you are employed, work- study funds are used to subsidize your earnings. If you do not find a job, you do not receive any money from the allotment. The amount of your allotment limits the number of hours you may work per week. Work-study allotments cannot be increased after the allotment is made.