How To Become A Graduate Student Assistant: What It Is and Career Path

What is a graduate student assistant and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Tom Solomon

A graduate student assistant assists professors and departments with known administrative tasks. They are responsible for organizing undergraduate events, finding information in libraries, researching internet sources, conducting various research experiments, and analyzing data. They also design research methodologies and literature reviews, undertake various fieldwork research, and co-authored research papers with professors.

Further duties include attending seminars and periodically lecturing classes, assuming the role of teaching assistant, and assisting with teaching material, assisting professors with grading papers, administering performance evaluations of student staff, and assisting with the management of ceremonies and campus events.

A graduate student should have a good academic record, experience with student councils, and leadership positions. They should also have sound leadership skills, excellent organizational skills, and exceptional interpersonal skills. Also, good written and verbal communication, as well as basic computer literacy, is required of them.

They are paid an average salary of $34,669 a year, that's $16.67 an hour. A graduate student should have a bachelor's degree and be enrolled or in the process of doing a master's or postgraduate degree.

What general advice would you give to a graduate student assistant?

Tom Solomon

Professor of Physics, Bucknell University

This one is pretty obvious - pursue your passions. It is more important to pursue a career in a field that inspires you than to focus on salaries. You will always be more successful if you are engaged in what you are doing. It's also important to realize that even in the "ideal" job, you won't always enjoy everything that you are doing, but if you enjoy the basic work that you are doing, you will be able to get through the more difficult moments as well.

Also, never underestimate the importance of writing and oral communication. Everyone needs to be able to communicate their ideas to other people.

Be patient. Sometimes it takes a while to find the best fit for you.

ScoreGraduate Student AssistantUS Average

Salary

2.9

Avg. Salary $37,164

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

3.7

Growth rate 19%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

8.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 1.11%

Asian 11.92%

Black or African American 11.03%

Hispanic or Latino 17.65%

Unknown 4.53%

White 53.76%

Gender

female 50.08%

male 49.92%

Age - 45

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 45

Stress level

3.7

Stress level is moderate

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.7

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

8.0

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a graduate student assistant

Explore graduate student assistant education requirements

Most common graduate student assistant degrees

Bachelor's

71.3 %

Master's

20.8 %

Doctorate

4.6 %

Start to develop specific graduate student assistant skills

Skills	Percentages
Cell Culture	8.69%
R	8.29%
Chemistry	5.42%
Molecular Biology	4.74%
Research Projects	4.31%

Research graduate student assistant duties and responsibilities

Lead the in-vitro biophysical and biochemical characterization of homologous recombination and investigate structure-function effects of mutant enzymes.
Cloned genes by lambda phage library screening and RT-PCR.
Used differential display RT-PCR to identify candidate mRNA's.
Develop test suite to automatically test this system using python.

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