Financial Support

It is the policy of Duke Statistics that each Ph.D. student be fully financially supported during the academic year. Only in exceptional cases will students be admitted without financial support. Financial support consists of (i) a scholarship that pays for all tuition and fees, (ii) an assistantship with either teaching or research duties that provides a stipend adequate for living in Durham, and possibly (iii) a fellowship that provides additional money for the student.

Financial aid is awarded with the understanding that it will continue, subject to satisfactory progress and satisfactory performance of assistantship duties, for at least four years or until completion of the Ph.D. program, whichever comes first. Petitions for extensions are considered by the Director of Graduate Studies.

Students who are eligible for external financial support such as fellowships from the NSF or from their home countries are expected to apply for the external support before relying on Duke Statistics support. Pointers to external funding can be found on the Graduate School financial aid web page.

Students working on assistantships help Duke Statistics faculty with either teaching or research during the academic year. Assignments change from semester to semester. Assistantship support is often available over the summer. In addition to Duke-based research summers, many students gain internships in summer; some recent research interns have spent summer in groups and labs at, for example, AT&T Research, Barclays Financial, BEST Inc (see the BEST Award link), Google Research, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, SAS and Yahoo, among others.