Graduate Admissions

Financial Support

The aim of the Philosophy Department is to provide financial support to all graduate students in good standing through their entire program. So far, we have been 100 per cent successful by providing a combination of different forms of support.  Note that a full year at SFU consists in three terms (Fall, Summer, and Spring.)

• Teaching Assistantships (TA). In any given term, most students support themselves by working as Teaching Assistants. TAs lead the tutorial sections of large introductory courses, grade student work, and hold office hours. Current amounts are approximately $7,371 per semester for MA students: $6,421 as salary + $950 as scholarship (graduate students who are working as TAs automatically receive these scholarship funds).  Students must apply for TA positions in order to be considered for them. We contact all new students in the semester before they start with all the necessary application information.
• Graduate Fellowships (GF). The department has at its disposal a limited number of University Graduate Fellowships (worth about $7,000 per semester) some of which we occasionally use for recruiting purposes. Most GF’s are awarded to students near the completion of their degree to free them from teaching for a term.
• Research Assistantships (RA).& The Department does not regularly offer RAships. However, there may be RAships funded by grants awarded to individual faculty members.
• Graduate Awards. Graduate Studies provides merit-based awards to graduate students of high academic achievement.

We encourage all applicants to apply for external fellowships such as SSHRC and Commonwealth and others. For information on these and other awards, please see the Scholarships and Awards page on the Dean of Graduate Studies website.