What you get
A graduate assistantship is a part-time appointment (commonly 10–20 hours a week) that pays a stipend and, in most cases, remits some or all of your tuition and provides access to student health insurance. In exchange you do real work for the university — the assistantship is a job, not a scholarship.
The three kinds
A teaching assistant supports a course — leading labs or discussion sections, grading, holding office hours. A research assistant works on a faculty member's funded project. A graduate assistant does administrative or program work for a department or office (advising support, lab management, outreach, assessment). What is available depends on the program and the year.
How to get one
Some programs assign assistantships with admission to their strongest applicants — which is why applying early and by the funding deadline matters. Others post openings that admitted and enrolled students apply to, sometimes continuously. Ask the program director directly during the application process what the path is, and express interest explicitly.
The hours are real
A 20-hour assistantship is a half-time job on top of graduate coursework. Programs know this and structure the load around it, but you are not free those hours. Treat the appointment like the professional commitment it is — it is also often the work that shapes your career direction and your letters of recommendation.
Tax and enrollment rules
The stipend is taxable income (tuition remission generally is not up to a limit). You typically must be enrolled full-time as a graduate student to hold an assistantship, and there are limits on how many terms or years you can hold one. International students have specific work-authorization rules that the assistantship satisfies but that you must not step outside.
If you do not get one
Many strong graduate students fund their degree through employer tuition assistance, graduate scholarships, part-time work, and federal graduate loans, and study part-time. An assistantship is the best deal when you can get one and go full-time; it is not the only viable path.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.