Students who receive TA support will typically teach either lecture discussion sections or laboratory sections of an undergraduate-level class. Clearly, a student who received TA support must find the time outside of their TA responsibilities in order to make satisfactory progress on their thesis research. RA support is traditionally made possible by federal funding of a faculty mentor's research program. Students who receive RA support are usually paid to work on their thesis research problem. At Northeastern as in many graduate programs, most graduate students admitted to the graduate program are provided TA support for their first year.
Some graduate programs are relatively large with more than one hundred graduate students.
Other programs such as our own at Northeastern University may be much smaller. In larger programs the typical size of a research group may be greater - say ten or more students. In smaller programs like Northeastern's, the research group may be much smaller - five or fewer students. One is not better than the other. However the size of a group will have a direct impact on the quality of your educational experience.