Columbia MSEE FAQ:
2.9 What kinds of financial aid exist?

Graduate students may be supported by the following means:

• Self-funded i.e. student pays his or her own tuition and living expenses. Quite a number of students work towards their MS part-time at the same time as holding a job. Some students come in with funding from other outside agencies.
• Graduate research assistant (GRA): Student works on a research project for a faculty; the project is typically funded by an outside source, and the funding includes money to pay the GRA's tuition and stipend (living expenses, at a fixed rate set by the department).
• Teaching assistant (TA): Student helps with teaching one of the department's courses, or other similar educational role, and in return the department pays his or her tuition and stipend (at the same rate as for GRAs). There are fixed number of TAs allocated each semester, depending on our teaching needs. A TA is understood to involve 20 hours/week of teaching-related responsibilities.
• Reader: Effectively a half-TA; for a correspondingly smaller time commitment, the student gets roughly half the benefits of a TA.
• Grader: A fixed payment of around one months' stipend in return for grading the homework for a particular course. Students who are otherwise self-funding are the usual candidates for grader positions.

In the past we have had students who have accepted a position in the MS program without any support from the department, but have arrived planning to try and secure support after a semester or two here. This is essentially very unlikely if there was no support in the initial offer, particularly for terminal-MS students. A terminal-MS student who is subsequently accepted into the Ph.D. program would likely be supported once they commence the Ph.D. program, but they would still have had to fund their entire MS by themselves.

The great majority of department support is reserved for students expected to stay here through a Ph.D. program; almost all terminal-MS students are self-funded. The hope is that having an MS degree will sufficiently enhance your employment prospects to justify the expense!

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