Any advice for some searching for a gradute teaching assistantship?

Hi everyone,





I would really love to go to graduate school, however the only way this will be financially possible will be if I get some kind of teaching assistantship. I'm currently a journalism major in college - and for graduate school, I'm extremely open-minded to just about anything, but I would be the most interested in studying journalism, education administration, social work, psychology - but just about anything really. I just feel like I don't know where to begin looking.





Is the money you make as a ta enough to live off of? I ask because if it IS enough, I'd apply for assistantships all over the country, but if not I would probably just stick to the Chicago area where I can live at home with my folks and not have to pay for housing.





Are teaching assistantships difficult to get? While it would be nice to get one at a top 10 public university, I'd be content with one at an average school too. My GPA is in the 3.5 range. How many would you recommend applying for?





Do you have to fill out a seperate application for a teaching assistantship or is it considered applied for with the general grad school admission ap?





Any advice to someone just embarking on this journey?|||Getting a TA depends a lot on your department. But, the first thing you need to do is figure out what you want to study. Being open for anything isn't the right way to go about graduate school. By the time you are looking at graduate schools, you need to know what it is you want to study. So, figure that out.





Once you have that figured out, the next thing you need to do is apply to graduate schools. Financial stuff and TA's are not part of the picture until you have been accepted in a graduate school. There's no way to get a TA if you aren't even a student in the department. So, figure out what schools you want to apply to and apply to them.





As part of the acceptance, they will make you an offer. Here's where it depends on what your department is. If you are going to med school or law school, there will be no offer, you just pay the price of tuition and take out loans to cover that. If you are doing sciences (physics, etc) the offer will include TA position that will not only pay you but will waive tuition. The pay isn't good, but it's enough to live on. For the subjects you are interested in, I don't really know. My guess is they will offer you a TA position as well, but I don't think they are as good a deal as the science grad students get. It is really dependent upon the department, and even the school.





What I would recommend doing is figuring out what you want to study, then call up the graduate assistant in that department at a few schools that you are interested in and talk to them about what you can expect for a TA. But I would expect almost any department will expect you to be a TA and give you enough money to live on (with the exception of law and med schools).