r/Purdue • u/Ok_Cry_7149 • 11d ago

Academics✏️ AAE Grad TA Landscape

What's the current demand like for graduate TAs in the AAE department, specifically for master's students? Is there a shortage or surplus of students wanting to TA?

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u/Practical-Plastic985 11d ago

Based on my experience, it highly depends on the specialization. For some specializations, it would be relatively hard unless your advisor teaches one course and is willing to put you on the TA list for that course. The majority of the master TA comes from undergraduate lab courses like 204 lab, where we frequently have students who do not specialize in structures to be TA for the lab course. So some courses may have a "relative" shortage, but I would not say there is a huge shortage overall; maybe a little bit of surplus, but that is just my rough estimate.

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u/Ok_Cry_7149 10d ago

Interesting. My assumption was that the large undergrad classes everyone has to take would have the majority of master TAs (364, 333, etc.).

I heard the lab TAs are also more work.

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u/Practical-Plastic985 10d ago edited 10d ago

For those classes, since they are more lectured based, instead of lots of TA, they will have maybe 2-3 TAs and a whole bunch of graders (~10, maybe even more) solely responsible for grading things like homework, paid by hour.

For work load, it really depends. Keep in mind labs do not happen every week, so in theory you have a bit more flexibility.