Graduate Assistantship is guaranteed financial aid with duties in teaching, research or school management. Usually students receiving the assistantship will receive monthly stipends plus a partial or full tuition waiver, the total financial aid value will be around $30,000 - $45,000 USD per year, enough to cover all the tuition and living cost (room and board).

In order to receive the assistantship position, one must be willing to work ( 20 hours per week) while pursuing his/her degree. Generally speaking, there is a competition for the assistantship positions, this is especially true to the international student because assistantships are the major or only BIG financial support resource available for international students in most universities at graduate levels..

How can I be secured for a Graduate Assistantship?

For majority of the international students, after taking the TOEFL (and GRE, not mandatory but give you more options), they start to conduct the internet search through Google, it is very easy to find the assistantship info from webpages of over 2000 universities in the US alone, however, there are two big problems:

1) University website is NOT under the control of individual professors, school’s website can only provide general information, not up-dated specifical assistantship job. Even when the assistantship jobs are not available, the general information is still there, and could be there for years, misleading many international students.

2) Even if some assistantship positions posted on school website are truly available, if you can find it through Google search, many other students from around the world can do the same, consequently, if you send in your application targeting these positions, you will be facing a hot competition from your peers because you are only one fish in a big "fish pool", therefore, your slim chance is further diminished.

Another “tricky” factor regarding the assistantship is the source of funding. If the funding is from the department or university, all the students seeking for the assistantship positions must follow the general application procedure set up by the university, in other word, all the students must compete one another in the “fish pool”, but only the top catfish can make it in the end. However, if the funding is from other resources outside school, such as from the companies or other sponsored research projects, then, the individual professor who deals with these projects will have the absolute right to pick up whoever he/she wants to work with, under such a situation, the professors do not have to check over the “fish pool”.

Apparently, as you see from above, if you can somehow identify these professors who have “fresh” assistantship openings unknown to the public, then, communicate with these professors in the first place, and send in the application materials only after the professors have given you the “green light”, you will have a great chance to secure your assistantship, you don’t have to fight with other fish in the "fish pool".  

NEEI,  using cutting edge computer search engine technology , can identify these professors who have “fresh” assistantship jobs in hands, consequently, we can guide our students to the right direction (contact to the right professors). We are the only one providing such kind of service, we are proud to be able to help you reach your educational and professional goals in the USA with great financial aid.

One more thing, students with the funding from graduate assistantships have very high visa success rate.