How to Get Full Funding Offer in Economics From US Universities?

3. What qualification is required to get a full fund offer?

Answer: There is no absolute answer to this question! But I can try to answer partly from my own experience. You know admission and funding do not depend on any single factor but on a set of factors. They are GRE score, IELTS/ TOFEL score, SOP, and LOR. CGPA, Publication, and teaching and research experience.

If you are an Economics student, you already know how necessary and sufficient condition works! GRE is a necessary condition but, not a sufficient condition. You must need a good GRE score, but it cannot guarantee your admission/ funding.

However, it is one of the most (perhaps the most important factor for some schools) important components for your admission with funding. For, MS tries to manage at least 155 in the quant section and 160+ for PhD admission.

Again, if your score is 156, you still may get a full funding offer for PhD program given that you have a very good CGPA, a High IELTS score, and so on. So, do not give up if your score is below what is expected. But I would suggest you secure 160+. You can easily then get fully funded admission for PhD if you have a decent CGPA and IELTS score.

No problem if you don’t have any publication or prior research experience on this case. Verbal is not very important but AWA in GRE exam is very important for funding. Try to keep our CGPA over 3.5. You may get a fully funded offer with below 3.0, but I am sure you will get rejected from many schools even with GRE 160 in quant.

So, try to make a balance between your CGPA and GRE score. You can take either IELTS or TOFEL. Put extra emphasis on the speaking and writing section. Writing score is important for getting RA position while speaking is very important for TA position.

Even some universities explicitly mention having a certain score in the speaking section to be considered for TA position. You may get funding with an overall 6.5 in IELTS, but 7.0 is the safe score. And the higher is better.