Grad school app season is (mostly) over, and since academic twitter is going nuts about the idea of paying research assistants $15/hr...

Let's talk about how expensive it is to be a student applying to graduate school--especially for underrepresented students.

(1/14)

This fall, I spent $515 on applying to grad school. This might sound high, but in fact, the cost was ~4 times less than it would have been in a normal year for me. Why? Mostly, the GRE.

(2/14)

Since the GRE subject tests were cancelled bc pandemic, every school I applied to no longer required the GRE, general or subject. I also had application fee waivers to 2/3 of the schools I applied to through various programs like AISES.

(3/14)

The general GRE costs $205 and the subject tests cost $150. Sending scores to more than four schools will cost you $27 for each test.

(4/14)

If I didn’t have fee waivers for 2/3 of my apps and if every school had required the GRE tests—which almost every grad school did before 2020—the estimated cost for me to apply to grad schools is well over $2000.

(5/15)