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Students who receive funding for graduate school generally receive one or more of four types of financial assistance: fellowships, competitive scholarships, research assistantships, and teaching assistantships. Other students have independant funding and must find a thesis supervisor.
A fellowship provides students with a direct stipend that leaves them open to select their research project and supervisor. A number of students in the department are supported by fellowships from outside agencies, and others are supported by fellowships from the university. The department currently does not offer fellowships.
Competitive scholarships generally provide partial support, for a few students, on the order of $1,000 per year, along with an in-state tuition waiver. The department has very few of these scholarships available. All eligible students are notified by email when applications are being accepted.
A small fraction of the incoming students - those judged by the department to be the best prospects - receive guaranteed offers of assistantships shortly after being accepted. This means that the department guarantees that they will receive a full research or teaching assistantship for their first academic year.
The majority of students in the Department of Biomedical Engineering are supported by graduate research assistantships (GRA), which are appointments to work on particular research projects with particular faculty members. Faculty members procure research grants for various projects and hire graduate students to help carry out the research. The research is almost always structured so that it becomes the student's thesis. A fulltime GRA provides a full tuition scholarship (i.e. covers all tuition but not necessarily fees, see link to cost of attending page) and health benefits in addition to a salary. A GRA requires that one register for classes and/or thesis credits as stipulated by the degree program and any visa requirements. Generally, the student will register for no more than two classes per semester with the summer normally reserved for thesis work alone.
Graduate teaching assistantships (GTA) are relatively few in number, and are usually offered to students who are already at Texas A&M and known to the departmental faculty. Teaching assistants are appointed to work on specific subjects of instruction. As the name implies, those with GTA usually assist a faculty member in teaching, often supervising undergraduate laboratory courses. In Biomedical Engineering, GTAs are seldom used for regular full-time classroom teaching. The student must also register for classes and/or thesis credits as required by the degree program and any visa requirements. Tuition (but not fees) is covered by the university, and an appointment usually does not extend through the summer.
Once a student is formally admitted to the department, he/she is eligible for an assistantship. At this point it helps to understand how the funding of graduate research works. Faculty members write proposals for specific research, and they often hire research assistants to do the research with/for them. The departmental Graduate Office distributes lists of admitted students to all faculty members, noting each student's interest, previous university affiliation, grade point average, etc. From these lists, the faculty identify candidates for the positions they have available. Individual professors are looking for the best matched students for their research projects, and the students are looking for the most interesting or satisfying research experience.
Students seeking research assistantships should be aware that many, if not most, commitments are made after April 15. Positions become available through the spring, summer and fall, depending on when the research grants come in, and a significant fraction of new research assistantship offers are made after the beginning of the fall term.
What can students who have just been accepted do to improve their chances in this process? The first step is to carefully read the Research areas listed on the BMEN website. From these areas students can identify the faculty members they would like to work with, and should feel free to write, e-mail, or telephone them; they should not be shy about making the professors aware of any special qualifications that they (the students) might possess (previous research experience, etc.).
Students who have fellowships or are privately funded need to associate themselves with a faculty member who will supervise their thesis research. They should choose a supervisor in much the same way as another student would try to secure a research assistantship, first identifying prospective faculty members by their research areas and checking whether there are projects they can work on. Research requires money, and even though these students require no salary from the department, they are well advised to find a supervisor who has some funding for the intended work. Although their obligations to the research are not the same as those of an research assistant, in practice they end up working just as hard in order to finish their theses in a reasonable time. It is usually a good idea to associate with a supervisor as soon as possible after arrival. The student then becomes part of a research group, and is in a position to get advice and learn from his/her supervisor and from the more experienced students in the research group.
