Assistantships & Financial Support You accepted me into your graduate program but did not offer me an assistantship. Does this mean that you consider me a less qualified student? No. Our departmental assistantships are awarded probably as much on the basis of "right time, right place" as on the basis of academic competitiveness. In other words, you may have an excellent academic background with strong references but not be awarded an assistantship, if one was not available in your commodity area of interest, or if the professor you chose to or hoped to work with does not have funding available right now (perhaps due to already having prior commitments to other graduate students). However, because we do not personally know most students that apply to our program, all we have to go on in most cases is your paperwork. Obviously, we will be most excited about investing in students who earned good grades in good courses as undergraduates, and whose references have spoken very highly of them. Some departments do not accept students into their programs if they are unable to award the student an assistantship. We feel that if a student makes a strong application and wants to work with us even if we cannot fund them, we will accept them into our graduate program and provide them with the same strong mentorship we give all our students. We do not accept students unless we think they are fully qualified to do graduate work. If you are accepted into our program, are not offered funding, and decide to enroll and fund your own education, you may reapply for an assistantship after your first full semester here, to fund the remaining year(s) of your graduate program. However, funding for graduate education is very tight (this is true for most departments in most colleges of most universities); we will consider your application for funding but there are no guarantees.