I think its assistanship rather than scholorship. If you are a sciience major (excluding engineering), there are lots of assistanship opportunities. If you are accounting, management, computer scince, mis, and engineering; its competitive but still there are opportunities. This depends upon your GPA, GMAT (Mgmt, accounting) anf GRE (others), recommendations, and expereince. Expereince will be evaluated while applying for mgmt and accounting but its not the only criteria. In the sceince, your research will play a role. It is always insisted to contact professors and find a research topic and apply for the assistanship in the science field. ( I might be wrong in this one cause I from mgmt background but I explaining my frens expereince). In mgmt field, there are usually coordinators who evaluates initially and the board that determines your application. Most of the State universities have assistantships. If you have full assistntship your all the expenses will be covered and you will be paid which will be good enough to survive. If you have partial assistantship, your all the expenses will still be covered but you will paid less which might not be sufficient for the survival. In this case you might need to work part time for the survival. If you have any questions, just post a thread, and I will try to answer it. If I cannot then assume that HF is busy. All the best Peace OUt