Life as a Graduate Student

Key aspects of the life of a Queen's engineering graduate student can be summed up as follows:

• graduate studies can be viewed as a job; you are effectively hired and paid by a professor to work on a specific project


• project will be funded by an outside agency, and in many cases, will be industry based


• thesis based students are paid a minimum salary (stipend), value varies with department, low is $16,500/yr, high is $28,000/yr


• as part of that stipend, you will typically have to work 5 to 10 hrs/week as a Teaching Assistant (marking assignments, supervising undergraduate labs)


• as a Master's student, you have the choice of a course based degree (10 courses, 1 year) or a thesis based degree (4 courses, 2 years)
• course based Master's students do NOT get a stipend

If that life appeals to you, the next step is to find a research project and a professor that interests you. Start by going to your program of choice and then follow the links to pages of individual professors. The majority of professors have webpages that outline their current projects and in many cases, identifies projects for which they a looking to hire new graduate students.

If you find a professor of interest, send him or her an email that states your background and your specific interest. The professor in turn will likely encourage you to apply to the graduate school so they can formally evaluate your application.