Australian Postgraduate Research Scholarships

For International students:
You are eligible to apply for
1. Scholarship that covers your course fees
2. Scholarship that covers your living expenses - normally from aud15k to 19k per annum

Scholarships that covers your course fees:
1. Endeavour International Postgraduates Research Scholarships (Endeavour IRPS)
- covers your visa application fees, your health insurance and waive your course fees (around 20k per annum)
2. University's IPRS
- usually paid by the uni's Graduate School. eg. MIPRS - Monash IPRS

If the above fails - try to get the Faculty to pay 50% of the fees, and get the Department to pay 50% of the fees. Or, get the supervisor to help using the grants, or the research center he/she belongs to.

Scholarship that covers your living stipend:
1. Graduate Scholarships from University's Graduate Schools.
eg. MGS (Monash Graduate Scholarships). The amount is different every year - I think there's an increment of 3% due to the inflation rate. It's around aud19k for 2007.
2. Top up scholarships from Research Centers.
Some projects allow top up scholarships (usually industrial projects), and it's around 6k per annum. So if you get both, you will get around 25k per annum - tax-free!

However, with scholarships, there are restrictions - you can't work for more than 6 hours per week in average. If you work as a tutor, you will normally get paid at aud90 for the 1st hour, and aud60 for the repeating hours. Ask me more bout this if you are interested. Anyway, if you teaches a 2 hours tutorials and two repeating classes:
aud90*2 + aud60*4= aud420per week.
Therefore, you will get around 1680per month
the living stipend without top up is around aud1.5k per month, adding the part time job - you get around 3.2k per month to spend - more than enough for livings I suppose!

(you only get taxed for any income more than 6k per year and that only applies to your part time job since your living stipend is tax-free)

I'll discuss about the application process in different uni, and the scholarships for locals in next few posts!

and let me know if you have any any questions!