Does MIT graduate school TA/RA support cover full tuition?

[ehrenfest]

Hello,

I have been looking into the cost of graduate school, and I am kind of confused about how much it costs. For example, on the MIT grad school website they say that most of their graduate school students get some kind of external or internal support, but they never really say whether that covers all of the cost or just some of it.

On this page
http://web.mit.edu/physics/graduate/applicants/fundinginfo.html
they say that "For both RAs and TAs, full tuition is paid over and above the stipend."

What does that mean? I think that linked page is saying that graduate school is free if you are willing to TA or RA, but I am not really sure I understood it right?

 

[Chris Hillman]

You guessed correctly: it means that tuition is in effect waived; the stipend is for your living expenses only. Don't worry, Boston might not be cheap but I am pretty sure that you can subsist on an MIT stipend. Willing to TA? That's a funny way of putting it; you would be putting in very few hours for something worth... whatever the complete tuition bill would come to, and you would even be giving enough money to live on. Pretty generous, really! BTW, many graduate students find that fulfilling their TA duties are their favorite part of their week.