How to Read a Canadian Graduate School Funding Offer Letter

The four line items in a typical offer letter

A Canadian graduate funding offer usually stacks four pieces: a base stipend or minimum funding guarantee, paid work as a teaching assistant (TA) or research assistant (RA), scholarship top-ups, and tuition and fees. Universities present these differently, some as one combined number, some itemized by source. Read every line before you compare offers, since a higher headline number sometimes hides lower guaranteed cash or higher fees.

Base stipend or minimum funding guarantee

Most Canadian research universities set a minimum funding guarantee for full-time thesis-based graduate students, especially PhD students. UBC's policy, for example, guarantees $40,000 for each of the first four years of a PhD, effective September 2026, built from any combination of internal or external awards, teaching work, research assistantships and graduate academic assistantships, according to UBC's minimum funding policy . Confirm whether the number in your letter is the guarantee floor, or already includes extras above that floor.

Check the guarantee length too. A four-year guarantee on a program that typically takes five to six years to finish leaves you exposed in the final year, which changes how you should budget from year one.

Teaching assistant and research assistant income

TA and RA positions are paid jobs, not scholarships, and usually fall under a graduate student union collective agreement that sets the hourly or per-course rate. A TA-ship might mean marking, running tutorials or holding office hours for an undergraduate course. An RA-ship pays you from your supervisor's grant to work directly on their research, which often overlaps with your own thesis.

Offer letters often list a target number of TA or RA hours per term. Confirm whether that workload is fixed or grows if the guarantee needs topping up, since more work hours mean less time for your own research and coursework.

Scholarship top-ups

Internal scholarships, entrance awards and named fellowships, plus external scholarships such as tri-agency Canada Graduate Scholarships or provincial awards, usually add on top of your base funding, though some universities reduce your TA/RA workload instead of stacking the award, a practice sometimes called a top-up versus a reduction policy. The CGS Master's award , for instance, currently pays $27,000 over 12 months. Ask directly whether winning an external scholarship increases your total income or only replaces university-funded work hours.

Some offer letters also require you to apply for specific external scholarships as a funding condition. Missing that application affects your funding for the following year, so treat it as a deadline, not a suggestion.

Tuition, fees and what's left

Tuition and mandatory fees, student union dues, health plan premiums, athletics, campus infrastructure, get deducted from your gross funding in some programs and billed separately in others. International student tuition runs substantially higher than domestic tuition at every Canadian university, so check whether your funding guarantee is set at a flat rate or scaled to cover that gap.

To find your real take-home number: add the base guarantee, TA/RA income and any scholarship top-up, then subtract tuition and mandatory fees for the same year. That number, not the total funding figure printed at the top of the letter, is what you have to live on.

Taxable vs non-taxable amounts

Scholarship and fellowship income and TA/RA wages are not taxed the same way. TA and RA pay is employment income and comes with a T4, with tax withheld at source like any job. Scholarship income for a full-time student in a qualifying program is generally reported on a T4A but often exempt from tax under the scholarship exemption, though the exact treatment depends on your situation. Confirm your specific case with the university's student financial services office or a tax professional rather than assuming every dollar in the offer letter arrives at the same after-tax value.

Negotiating the offer

Funding offer letters are not always final. If you have a competing offer from another school, tell your top choice directly and ask if they will match it, whether through a bigger internal scholarship, more TA hours, or a longer guarantee period. Departments have more flexibility on this than admission itself, since funding often comes from a discretionary pool the graduate chair controls.

Questions to ask before you accept

• Does the guarantee cover all years of the program, or only some?

• Is summer funding included, or do you need a separate summer TA/RA position?

• Does winning an external scholarship add to your income or replace paid work hours?

• Are tuition and fees already deducted from the number in the letter?

• What conditions, GPA, satisfactory progress, applying for specific awards, keep the funding active?