When I went to engineer grad school as a white male...
For the first time in my life I actually was awarded lots of scholarships and dollars!
Exactly. I didn’t get scholarships and financial aid because I was only attending at night and refused to enroll in a full-time program, but I was told by the department head in my engineering school that I would have no trouble getting accepted for graduate school as long as I had a pulse and could breathe on a mirror.
I had a graduate research assistantship for my MSME program. Tuition plus a decent stipend. It was nice.
If you are an American in a STEM field and a full time Grad student, you should get paid to go. If you are paying, then you are doing something very, very wrong.