Financial Aid
A wide range of graduate student fellowships are awarded each year to outstanding applicants to USC.
There are many other organizations that provide full or partial fellowships for graduate study at USC. Ph.D. fellowships are competitively awarded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and many private foundations such as the Hertz and Whitaker foundations. Many of our students also receive graduate student fellowships from corporation with long standing ties to USC. Currently our students are supported by M.S. and Ph.D. fellowships from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm, Intel, Boeing, and many other aerospace, multimedia and high-tech companies. In some cases, these awards are made to existing employees to pursue their degrees on a part time basis, in others, the awards are for full-time study at USC. Please see the
Graduate School for further information regarding these and other fellowships.
The department of Electrical Engineering (both EE-P and EE-S divisions) employ approximately 60 Teaching assistants and 200 Research assistants every year. All students admitted to our PhD program are eligible for these awards and are chosen by the faculty and department by March for the following Fall and Spring semesters. Teaching assistantships are awarded by an evaluation committee to incoming students and awards are made based on academic performance and faculty recommendations. Teaching assistantships comes with a stipend and tuition waiver. Usually, teaching assistantships are awarded along with research assistantships to incoming PhD students. Research Assistantships are awarded by faculty members who have research projects. In order to ensure that classes with lab or discussion get qualified TA support, some TA awards are also made to outstanding and qualified existing students in the Department. Other forms of financial aid with no tuition suport include lab assistantships and graders. The LA awards are also made by the evaluation and awards committee. Interested PhD students in the Department can apply for such positions by going to the Department office in EEB 100. Graders are selected by instructors who require them and interested students can apply directly with the course instructors. Please note that only a few exceptional and outstanding MS students may receive research and/or teaching assistantships in the EE Department. With over 100 students admitted to our program every year, competition for these awards is great. Research and teaching assistantships in EE are not offered to MS applicants. The way for you to ensure that your file will be considered, is to:
- Submit a completed university application form
- Be sure that your documents (official transcripts, GRE scores, statement of purpose and recommendation letters for PhD only) are sent in a timely manner, and
- Complete the supplemental EE information form (Click here for form).
Please use the same email address on all USC documents and correspondence.
Through the Federal Stafford Loan Program U.S. Citizens and permanent residents can typically borrow up to $18,500 per year to help defer their costs (including tuition and living expenses) to attend USC. Information regarding student loans and application packets can be obtained by calling (213) 740-1111.
Other forms of full time/part time non-departmental employment are available at USC. Following are a few examples. Remember, your fellow students are often an invaluable source of information about employment opportunities.
Many of our US citizen and permanent residence students work full or part-time at technical companies in and around the greater Los Angeles area. Apply directly to those companies for positions available. For companies affiliated with the USC Distance Education Network, their students are able to take USC course work at the company site via satellite, webcast or ITFS. Please see
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