“Generally, the programs we compete with are making similar offers,” Brandt said, and the stipend that is currently offered “is generous but hard to live on.”

The life of a graduate student-parent can involve extensive juggling to make ends meet.

Sebastian Velez is in his sixth year as a PhD student in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and he has been a parent for the entirety of his studies. His daughter, now six, has “been taking my classes with me since she was born,” he said.

“She draws on the board and interacts with the students. I teach biology so she plays with the skeleton,” Velez said. I’m teaching [Invertebrate Systematic] this semester and so we get live animals like tarantulas. Today she was playing with a leech.”

Velez, a single parent, did not apply for the daycare scholarship. He said he was concerned that if he did not receive the scholarship, which requires preregistration at a daycare center, he would have been obligated to pay for a month of childcare—a cost he could not have afforded.

Making ends meet is hard to do as things stand, Velez said. He currently serves as a resident tutor, assistant resident dean, and sophomore advising coordinator in Kirkland House; acts as a teaching fellow for an undergraduate course; and grades Life Science 1b exams. Last semester, Velez also taught a nighttime course at the Harvard Extension School.

“I didn’t come here to be a tutor, as much as I enjoy it. I came here to research,” Valez said. “I am behind but I’m doing it. I arrive in the lab at eight in the morning after I drop the daughter at school. But I can’t be there until four in the morning. I can’t compete with that.”

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Elyssa A.L. Spitzer can be reached at spitzer@fas.harvard.edu.