The Basics: How much is this going to cost?

Let's face it, school is expensive. Many of us finished our undergraduate degrees with crippling loads of student debt, and the last thing we want to do is add thousands more dollars to that financial burden. To that end, it is very important to spend some time thinking about the costs associated with pursuing graduate education before deciding if it is the right choice for you. The ultimate goal is, of course, to get fully funded for your graduate work, but even in that case understanding the magnitude of the cost of your education can provide important perspective as you work towards your degree.

Make a budget (actually make a few budgets)

For most of us, making budgets isn't very much fun. This primarily stems from the knowledge that even though it's only hypothetical at this stage, you will be spending all of that money some time in the not too distant future. Still, budgets are important and, in this case, they can provide you with important information about how much money you will need to find to pay for grad school.

There are two types of budgets that are particularly helpful in this instance. First, there is the "in school" budget. This budget should contain all of the projected costs of attending graduate school: tuition, books, housing, food, transportation, you name it. Nearly every university has projected estimates of cost of attendance. Pick out a few of your top schools and use their projections of attendance costs to figure out how much it will cost to get your degree. These estimates often encompass expenses that many of us forget to think about, such as health insurance, and take into account residency status (more about this later).

Next comes the "after school" budget. This is more of a grand scale projection and the accuracy of the math gets a bit fuzzier here. The idea here is to factor in the "cost" of not working while you are in school. In other words, how much money could you have made if you had just forgotten about grad school and gotten a job (assuming you could find one). To balance out that depressing value, you then factor in your salary increase after receiving your graduate degree and figure out how long it will take for them to balance out. Estimating the salary increase is, of course, a difficult thing to do. It varies greatly among disciplines, and depends on what sector you intend to work in after earning your degree. An interesting article on this can be found here. Lastly, our goal is to avoid taking on any further debt, but if you have any existing student loans, they go on the negative side of this equation (sorry).

These two budgets will provide you with critical information about the financial costs of attending graduate school. The "in school" budget gives you a fairly accurate estimate of the amount of money you will need to secure/find/raise to get your degree. Knowing this value can help you to figure out how much money to ask for when applying to grants and scholarships. It can also be useful when writing scholarship applications to highlight just how much your education will cost. The "after school" budget is more for your personal use. Figuring out (or at least roughly estimating) the long term costs/benefits of earning a graduate degree can help you to make informed decisions regarding your educational and professional goals. Of course, you're hopefully pursuing a degree in a field about which you are completely passionate, so why should money matter? That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Stay tuned,

Casey