Funding Opportunities for Graduate Students

There are several possible sources of funding within the University for qualified graduate students:

Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA): In 2008/2009, stipends were approximately $1600/month for nine months. Students on assistantships are exempt from tuition.

Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA):

Computer Science Scholars: a limited number of exceptional applicants are admitted as CS Scholars, which guarantees them multiple years of support.

Graduate Research Traineeships:

Cunningham Fellowships:

Minority Scholarships: Virginia Tech provides a number of scholarships for minority students who are US citizens. Contact the CS Department at gradprog@vtopus.cs.vt.edu for further information about applying to these programs.

Other departments and local companies: Our graduate students are in demand to fill positions in other departments doing software development and system adminstration. There are also a number of software development companies in the Corporate Reseach Center (CRC) who have a history of hiring our students.
MS Thesis and PhD Students who received Departmental support in their first year can normally expect to recieve continued support during the remainder of their course of study (typically 2 years for MS, 4 years for PhD), so long as their job performance is good. PhD students whose job performance is good are normally guarenteed three years of funding once they have passed their PhD Qualifier process. Coursework-only students will normally be given assistantships if funding is available after all qualified Thesis and PhD students have been funded