Fully funded is the most misleading phrase in doctoral admissions. It can describe a package worth 55,435 dollars a year with insurance on top, or one worth 25,000 dollars with fees still to pay, and both programs will use the same two words. The honest way to compare is by field, from published numbers. Our database holds 798 programs at 100 universities; 265 of them publish a 12 month stipend, and this is what those stipends look like when they are sorted by field.
PhD stipend amounts by field
| Field | Median 12 month stipend | Programs counted | Published range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Computer Science | $41,000 | 47 | $26,000 to $55,435 |
| Engineering | $40,666 | 52 | $27,467 to $55,435 |
| Physics and Astronomy | $40,144 | 32 | $24,970 to $55,435 |
| Mathematics, Statistics and Data Science | $40,144 | 34 | $27,467 to $55,435 |
| Life Sciences | $38,404 | 35 | $27,467 to $55,435 |
| Economics | $37,853 | 29 | $27,467 to $52,675 |
| Chemistry | $37,818 | 34 | $27,000 to $55,435 |
Two patterns matter more than the medians. The spread inside every field is enormous: the top of almost every range is the same 55,435 dollars, because most universities in the data pay one flat rate across their programs. In fact, 38 of the 46 universities with published 12 month figures list a single stipend for every doctoral program they run. Field explains part of your stipend. The university's pay policy explains the rest.
Where stipends peak: computer science and engineering
Computer science sits at the top of the phd stipend average by field table, and its leading programs lead the whole database. The top published computer science stipends are Princeton at 55,435 dollars, Brown at 52,198 dollars, Yale at 52,046 dollars, and MIT at 51,226 dollars. Departments are competing for the same students that industry labs want to hire, and stipends have followed. Our dedicated guide to computer science PhD stipends follows the cs stipend ranking in detail, including what the numbers look like after city rent.
What fully funded actually includes, counted
A stipend is only one line of the package. Across the 438 programs in our database that publish a stipend, this is what the rest of the package looks like where programs record it:
- Health insurance. Of the 164 publishing programs that record whether insurance is included, 131 include it and 33 do not.
- Fees. Of 132 programs that record fee coverage, 101 cover fees in full, 11 cover them in part, and 20 leave them to the student.
- Summer funding. 121 programs explicitly record summer funding as available. The rest do not say, which is not the same as a no, and is exactly the question to ask about a 9 month offer.
- Teaching load. Where a teaching load is recorded, the median is 20 hours a week.
Our earlier guide to fully funded PhD programs with a stipend shows how to verify each of these lines on a program page before you apply.
The duration catch nobody prices in
A funding guarantee is worth as much as the stipend itself. Of the programs in our database that state a guarantee, 105 guarantee five years, two guarantee six, and one guarantees four. A five year degree funded for four years leaves the most expensive year, the dissertation year, unfunded at exactly the moment leaving costs the most. Two offers in the same field at the same stipend are not equal offers if one guarantees a year more than the other. Multiply the stipend by the guaranteed years before you compare anything else.
How to compare two offers in different fields
Start from the field medians above so you know whether each offer is strong for its field, then adjust for the city, because a life sciences offer in Baltimore can leave more each month than a computer science offer in Cambridge. The RealPay Calculator does the full adjustment and places the offer against all 438 published stipends. Every program mentioned here can be checked in the searchable program database, and if you want the two letters compared line by line, send them over.
Sources: the PhDStipend database of 798 programs at 100 universities. Field medians computed from the 265 programs that publish a 12 month stipend; fields assigned by program. Package counts cover the 438 programs that publish a stipend, and each line counts only the programs that record that item. Rents are recorded city averages for a one bedroom home.