Financial Help - International Students

Financial help is a very dicey subject I have discussed about this in detail in several messages to the group.
Every university claims it offers financial help to students and to this
they add even international students. Mind you I have used the term
financial help and not financial aid. Aid and scholarships are mainly meant for local candidates.This is their marketing technique to attract students.
I have seen universities offering a token aid of 1000-5000 dollars for the first year in order to get more students.
The percentage of students who get aid is different for different
universities depending on the program of your study and local situation of availability of funds with the professors. For it is the professors who can offer you research assistantship. Along with this comes fee waiver.
My experience is that percentage of students who get aid sitting in India is negligible.Yes there is a positive aspect to this that percentage who are able to get the assistantships during the first semester of their study is quite high.
The conclusion of the above discussion is that while you should try for
financial help you should be prepared to spend for at least first six
months. If you get any help you will be lucky. If not there is a great
chance for your getting it on joining the university.
If you adopt this strategy your initial efforts and money shall not be
futile.
If money is your main concern then I would suggest you apply to universities whose expenses you can afford. There are good universities available with low costs. This in itself can be considered as some sort of financial help.
Good Luck
NBS

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