Financial Support and Housing: Department of Political Science

Financial Support and Housing

PhD students are eligible for financial support to cover tuition and living expenses. Their funding covers tuition, stipend, health services fees, and the annual health insurance premium. Any other fees, such as the activity fee, are paid by the student.PhD students are typically full-time students and are fully funded (stipend plus tuition scholarship) during their period of guaranteed funding:

Funded PhD and MFA students may work no more than 20 hours per week from all sources, including assistantships.
TGS expects PhD students will be financially supported through a combination of institutional and external funds for a minimum of five years (20 quarters).
The support provided to PhD students during their period of guaranteed funding includes year-round tuition, stipend, and fully subsidized health insurance.
Students who are awarded funding that provides comparable stipend support might also receive:
- A 1:1 match of up to four additional quarters of support to be used through the summer of the 6th year for graduate students who are awarded and accept full quarters of qualifying internal awards, including interdisciplinary graduate assistantships, or external awards.
- Verify all eligibility with our Graduate Program Coordinator, Justine Andrus-Zhao

PhD students are paid year-round, including over the breaks, while they are registered full-time (excluding TGS 512). Please note that the funding quarters do not exactly match the academic quarters. For example, the first stipend payment for new students is for the period of 9/1 – 9/30, even though classes do not start until late September. Conversely, a student who graduates in the Spring quarter (completes in May) is paid through 5/31 even though classes run a couple of weeks into June. Students receive 3 months of stipend for each quarter although the timing does not exactly match the academic schedule. Below are the funding quarters:

Fall: September – November
Winter: December – February
Spring: March – May
Summer: June- August

Graduate students are supported in a variety of ways:

The First Year

Financial support for first-year students comes in the form of University Fellowship to focus on coursework. Over the course of the Ph.D. program, eighteen (18) courses must be completed to fulfill the Department’s requirements for coursework. Students typically take 3 courses per quarter during Fall, Winter, and Spring of the first two years. Under University regulations, all students are required to be enrolled full-time each quarter: full-time is defined as being enrolled in 3 graded units of study (3 courses for first- and second-year students, and at least TGS 500 for those beyond coursework).

The Second through Fifth Years

Students within their first five years of study may be appointed as a graduate or teaching assistant (for details on requirements for teaching at Northwestern, visit our Policy section). Students in University-funded programs (humanities and social sciences) in their sixth year or beyond may be appointed by their department to a graduate or teaching assistantship if they have student banked quarters or advanced student quarters, and there is a specific teaching need. In 2025-2026, for example, these positions paid tuition plus a monthly stipend of $3863.00 before taxes for nine months. During the three months of the summer quarter, the stipend remains the same but is paid on a University Fellowship. These amounts vary slightly from year to year.

*International PhD students whose primary language is not English are required to fulfill The Graduate School’s English proficiency requirement before being appointed as teaching assistants. English Language Programs offers services to support students as they work to fulfill this requirement.

Students who satisfy any one of the criteria below fulfill TGS’s English proficiency requirement. Score thresholds have been selected to correlate across exam formats:

score thresholds

Additional funding opportunities

Numerous opportunities exist for students to obtain competitive university-wide fellowships through The Graduate School and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Some students may continue to be supported as Teaching or Research Assistants within the department, while others may take advantage of the opportunity to develop their own courses by teaching in the School of Professional Studies.

The department shares the university's philosophy of actively encouraging students to seek outside funding, believing this not only to be an indicator of scholarly achievement but also an invaluable exercise in professional development. The Office of Fellowships compiles information about graduate external fellowship opportunities, including links to diversity-based and awards available to international students.

Internal Grants

Conference Travel Grants of up to $800 are available, from The Graduate School, annually to graduate students who have completed their first year. The grants are to enable students to travel to conferences to present scholarly work. Grants are also available from The Buffet Institute and from the Department of Political Science.

Graduate Research Grants of up to $3,000 are available quarterly to fund research travel and materials deemed essential to students' work. The Graduate Research Grant may be awarded only once in a student's academic career.

Summer Language Grants of up to $2,000 are available to students in their first three years to fund travel, during the summer quarter, to obtain language skills not otherwise obtainable in the Chicago metropolitan area.

For more detailed information, visit the Graduate School's financial aid page.

Housing

Many graduate students rent apartments near campus. Information on university housing can be found at:

Alternatively, the Evanston campus is readily accessible by public transport from Chicago.