CSStipendRankings: Labels and Icons

The ranking table annotates each institution with small-caps labels and a few icons that summarize its funding situation. This page explains what each one means. Labels are drawn from the labels column of stipend-us.csv; a tag that is not documented here is ignored by the website and does nothing.

Summer-funding labels

Exactly one of these is attached to every institution, and it drives the “Summer funding guaranteed?” information and the Guaranteed stipend only ranking mode.

• summer-gtd — summer funding is guaranteed for at least 80% of PhD students. In Guaranteed stipend only mode, the full annual stipend is counted as guaranteed.
• summer-gtd (stored in the CSV as summer-partial-gtd=N) — summer funding is partially guaranteed. N is the guaranteed annual amount in USD (an integer, no $ or commas). In Guaranteed stipend only mode, the guaranteed portion N is counted instead of the reported summer amount.
• summer-no-gtd — there is no summer funding guarantee. In Guaranteed stipend only mode, the summer columns are subtracted from the annual stipend.
• summer-unknown — the summer-funding policy could not be confirmed. This is a placeholder that is not rendered on the website; it simply makes the missing data explicit in the CSV.

Other labels

These can be combined freely with the summer-funding label.

• varies — the stipend varies meaningfully from advisor to advisor or across sub-departments.
• no-guarantee — the department does not guarantee any funding at all (at least for a subset of its enrolled PhD students, where a PhD student is defined as a graduate student who is required to conduct research under an advisor to graduate and get a degree). In Guaranteed stipend only mode, the stipend is treated as $0. Anyone who can prove this is welcomed and encouraged to submit an issue, and we will add this label immediately. See the reason here.
• cpt-fee — international students in this department need to pay a fee for their CPT applications that is not already reflected in the fees column.
• striking — the department is currently under a strike.
• survey=<URL> — attaches a survey-link icon next to the institution name pointing to a stable public survey page (e.g., a department survey-results page).

Verification and survey icons

• Gray checkmark — the stipend is verified for the semesters, but not for the summer. The icon also serves as a hyperlink to the document used for verification when that document is publicly accessible (for example, a GitHub issue).
• Blue checkmark — the stipend is verified for 12 months. Like the gray checkmark, it may link to the verification document.
• Survey icon — we have a survey for this department. If you are a PhD student there, please click the icon to fill it in.

Checkmarks are often applied by our AI assistant rather than by a human, so a checkmark means that a source document was matched at the time — not that a person independently confirmed it. See AI Usage for what AI can get wrong, and open the linked document to judge for yourself.

How can I add or correct a label?

Labels are assigned only from evidence in the issue, a linked primary source, or an official statement — they are never inferred from third-party news articles. If a label on your department is wrong or missing, please open an issue or a pull request with supporting documentation, or start from the FAQ.