juilletmercredi

NOPE. I'm in the social sciences. Don't pay for a PhD. They should be funding you. The ROI is not big enough to pay off those loans. Especially if this is a private school - one year's cost could be $60,000, so if you have to borrow for two years, that's $120K plus whatever you have from undergrad. I don't think a bird in the hand is worth anything when it's an unfunded PhD program. I'm a never-say-never type, too, but I say in 95% of situations PhD students shouldn't be paying for their own programs, especially when the program says they will have money next year. If they will, you can begin next year when they have money. A program that really wants you as a student will readmit you next year, and will understand that you declined because they couldn't pay you! No, PhDs aren't done for the money, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep your head above water if you can.

In my experience, you will always do work as an RA. It's just that with a fellowship, you get to choose what work you will do and who you will work for. I have an NSF GRF. It's a fellowship that, technically, does not require anything from me except that I do well in school. But in my social science field, you work as an RA and that IS researching your dissertation project or working on research. Doing independent research is nigh on impossible - you don't have the equipment or the funding on your own to design your own project, pay your own participants, get them to take the web-based survey in the lab or do the experiment in the lab and then do the statistical analyses to produce the paper. So you establish a mutually beneficial relationship with an advisor/PI. Their grants pay for the equipment and participants you need to do your dissertation project, and ideally they also advise you on your path to the PhD and a postdoc. In return, your work helps produce publications for them and get needed work in the lab done. And in my field, it's far more common for PhD students to carve out a "piece" of the overall grant project to work on for their dissertation. My dissertation is a "piece" of the larger survey that we did in the lab, that I helped recruit participants for, am cleaning the data for, will run statistical analyses for, etc. The benefit of my NSF is that I was not arbitrarily attached to whatever faculty member had an RAship, and required to do their work (which I may or may not have been interested in) but that I got to choose who I wanted to work for. So while, technically, your fellowship won't require any work as an RA, you will still be doing work as an RA.

Are you sure you have to completely change topics? It looks like you're in psychology, which is my field. My work isn't completely new; it a lot of ways it's an extension of previous work that's done, but it takes that work in new directions. Are you sure that you can't still work on your original research plan but just change it enough so that it goes in new areas? No one expects doctoral students to completely revolutionize the field or even to do a dissertation on a completely original area of inquiry. We don't yet have the chops to do that. Most researchers carve out a little chunk of the field and tend to that. You're always going to feel like you could be working harder. Even people who work 80 hours a week feel like they could be doing more or working harder. It's because that's the nature of academic work. It's never finished; there's always something else that you can do. Once you're done with a paper, you can always write another one, or another grant, or work on your syllabus or teaching, or go to a conference or that seminar or…something. The key is to know your limits and set boundaries for yourself that you stick to. Everyone needs a personal life! If you truly need to work harder, organize your time and put yourself on a schedule. See a counselor or someone in the academic success/graduate advisor office if you need help setting a schedule and sticking to it. But first assess whether you really need to work harder or whether you're just beating yourself up because you're upset. Also, failure is part of being an academic. It's a competitive world. Grants often have very low acceptance rates. My advisor, an asst. prof at a top university, had to submit a paper about 5 or 6 different times before he got it in somewhere. We have to let our "failures" roll off our backs, take the feedback offered and keep it moving. It doesn't say anything about you and your quality as a scholar (unless you go for years and years and you never get anything). It's just the nature of the field.

I have a colleague kind of like this...she often interprets things I say and do in ways that I would never say or do them, and communicates them to my advisor very bluntly. She says them in front of me, so I know that she is also saying them when I am not there, too. I say nothing. Over the course of your relationship with your advisor, s/he will get to know you and know what it is likely that you actually said or did and what is unlikely that you said or did.

What is your price range? The Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with the special offers, and the Kindle Keyboard 3G is $139. The 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (a full Android tablet) is $199, the Google Nexus 7 is $239. Give the relatively small difference in price - $100 at best - I would go with a smaller Android tablet rather than a Kindle. I have an iPad and it's SO useful for academic usage, not just because I can read PDFs but because the interface makes it easier to annotate than a Kindle (especially a Kindle keyboard, which will necessitate one-letter-at-a-time tapping) and because the iPad offers other apps to keep my academic life together, such as Papers, Mendeley (a reference manager that allows you to sync your libraries across your computer and mobile devices; there are a few third-party apps that allow you to sync to Android devices like Droideley) and a new app released by the major professional organization in my field that allows you to search and read journals published by them. Plus my full-featured tablets do other things for me, like help me keep my life together via a calendar or allow me to browse the web, read the newspaper or magazines in full color, etc. I take my iPad everywhere with me. I had concerns about eye strain with the LCD screen, but I haven't found that to be a problem.

I use Zotero as my reference management software, because of its easy integration with web browsers and it's citation and reference list capabilities. I organize my Zotero collections by paper and topic. So if I use an article in a my 19th century basketweaving paper, it goes into the 19th century basketweaving subcollection; this makes it easier for me to create a reference list for that paper when I'm ready. (Zotero has this awesome drag-and-drop capability in addition to traditional integration with Word, so if you select an entire list of references and drag it to any word processor, it will give you a formatted, alphabetized reference list in your major style of choice.) I tried to use Mendeley, but it kept crashing on my computer. I'm using a relatively new Mac (2011), so I'm not really sure what the deal was. I do not print copies of my articles; not only do I not have that much print quota or physical space in my apartment, I simply don't want to kill that many trees, lol. I upload PDF files of each document to my Google Drive, which I then sync with two apps on my iPad - Notability and GoodReader. I prefer GoodReader, honestly; it was a well-spent $10. GoodReader gives me the ability to highlight and add annotations, which I do with a stylus typically. (Notability was recommended to me by an art historian; it doesn't work as well for me, but I think she likes it because you're allowed to do more free-form notetaking from your finger or stylus and she does a lot of scribbled/handwritten notes. She is actually handwriting her MA thesis, bless her magical heart.) My iPad, I find, is the perfect size for reading articles and to me it's just like reading on printed paper, except much much much more convenient. My entire lit review is on my iPad and I don't have to haul around binders or go searching for That One Paper.

I'd say 3.5 or higher, more likely a 3.7. It's partially program dependent, but in general in graduate school As are expected and Bs are mediocre/meh performance.

My PhD program required 60 credits so I took 4 courses a semester for 5 semesters, although I suppose I could've taken 3 classes a semester for 6 semesters. It was a lot of work especially on top of research, but it's not impossible. I did not, however, have to TA. In one of my departments, you can get 3 hours of credit for RA and TA work but you're limited to a certain amount of the 30 you're required. In my other department, there is nothing like that unless you design an independent study with a professor, so that's basically 30 hours of cold hard coursework.

First of all, if you want a career in academia, you are going to have to teach students. Most likely undergraduates, unless you are in a graduate-only field. With that said, you might as well get some experience doing it. In every class (with the exception of a few small, focused seminars) there are going to be some completely unfocused and uninterested students; some ridiculously well-prepared and awesome students; and a whole lot of people in the middle. TAing helps you learn how to deal with those kinds of students and how to manage your time and interest in teaching with your research responsibilities. Everybody sucks at first; practice makes perfect and you get better. And sometimes, you have a bad semester and the students do realize it. You learn how to get over that and not really care that much; if you're doing your best but you're just swamped or not very good at the material (or, sometimes, the professor is making you look bad because THEY are really disorganized)…whatever, it happens. Me, I'm kind of meh on TAing. I like working with and mentoring undergraduates, and I think I would like teaching my own independent courses. But my experiences with professors have just been so variable, and even when the professor is really awesome, I still have only had "meh" to negative experiences TAing. But it's because you do all the grunt work, right? The professor designs the lectures and the syllabus and determines the direction of the class. You get to do all the dirty stuff they don't want to do - grading (UGH), manging the course website and/or electronic learning resources, overseeing the paper/group project/special project, meeting with students in office hours, answering student emails, etc. I've had professors forward emails to me from students that would have literally taken them about 30 seconds to answer. I won't lie; it's also very time-consuming. I remember losing a semester because I was TAing two lab sections of statistics, which was a very time-intensive assignment (the professor basically just showed up to lecture, so we three TAs were responsible for designing, teaching, and grading the lab sections, designing the homework assignments and grading them, designing the exams and putting together review sessions. I learned a lot from that experience, though). Statistics is also just one of those classes that most of the majors in my field hate and that they need a LOT of help with. You have to become very good at managing your time and not spending too much time on TA responsibilities. However, I wouldn't turn down a program just because it requires TAing if the school is otherwise a good fit.

They call me by my first name. I would feel awkward if I insisted on them calling me Ms. Lastname, and I think my students would not only feel awkward but also think it was pretentious of me. But that's also my departmental culture - TAs are just their first name, and even professors go by their first name with some senior undergraduate RAs. I have nothing to compare it to, but I don't think they respect me less just because I go by my first name.

Well, I definitely gained about 40 lbs. in 4.5 years, if we're talking about weight. I started graduate school when I was 22 and I'm 26 now, so some of this was probably just due to growing up. -My time management has gotten a lot better. I break things down into chunks, make to-do lists, am relatively realistic about how long it will take me to do things, finish things, set and meet my own deadlines (usually). -I'm able to synthesize great amounts of information in short amounts of time. -My writing is better. I outline, write, and edit. -I've discovered what I really love to do - working with and mentoring students, and doing research. I came not wanting to be a professor, but now I really want to be one. -I'm much more confident in myself. -I'm a better speaker and presenter. -I do feel more like a "real person." Less consumed with academics (or as less consumed as one can be, given grad school) and more concerned with balancing my responsibilities and hobbies.

First - you don't have time constraints that only a grad can relate to. There are a lot of 30somethings with really demanding jobs - younger academics, lawyers, doctors, consultants, people who travel a lot for work. I think that was a big point of contention when I first came to graduate school, I thought only other graduate students could understand I was busy. Lots of other people are busy and even if they aren't, they understand that grad school is demanding. One of my closest friends works 9-5 in an administrative office here and we just hang out on the weekends when I have time. I also agree with the volunteering (met people through that), taking a class at the gym, joining a community group (I met some people through a social sports league I played in - kickball!), etc. Look at Meetup.com and see if there are any interesting meetups in your local area. Having non-grad school friends is actually really fun. And definitely take the initiative to invite people out yourself or be the one to set stuff up. I've found that people really like the person who takes the initiative to do that Doodle or WhenIsGood or set up that time and place for people to meet up. Also, there should be a group on campus for ethnic minority graduate students. If there isn't, start one! Partner up with the graduate student office and/or office of multicultural affairs.

If you've studied at a place where you support yourself through more TAs than RAs, you'll be in a better position to get a teaching-intensive SLAC job than a student who went to Harvard and spent 6 years doing research. At most SLACs, the faculty would rather have a Harvard PhD who demonstrated an interest in teaching and perhaps had a bit less experience than someone from an unrecognized or low-ranked program, even if they did teach a lot. It of course depends on the SLAC and what you mean by low ranked (I'm going with "low ranked" and not "lowER ranked"), but Swarthmore or Rhodes or Sweet Briar is going to want that Harvard PhD unless they show evident disdain for undergrads and/or can't imagine doing research with less than $2 million in start up funds. It really depends on your goals. My goal was to teach at a higher-ranked teaching-focused LAC or to do research work at the CDC or a top research institute, so my destination needed to be a top-ranked program in my field. If you're trying to work at competitive firms or NGOs in your industry that typically hire from top programs, then that needs to be a consideration as well. Honestly, given your interests I'm not really sure why you are pursuing a PhD at all. You can learn more by pursuing the master's, and a PhD doesn't really help you work on the ground with folks.

Hey! I'm at Columbia Mailman in sociomedical sciences I agree that you really only need to worry about whether you can survive on the funding in New York, and don't worry about what averages are. I would say you can live comfortably (not lavishly, but comfortably) on about $30K here. My offer at Columbia was about $31K in my first year (12 months), but I was on an NIH training grant my first two years.

1. What is the average time to degree of your students? What is the variance around this number? (E.g., is it 6 years and is that because pretty much everyone takes about 6 years, or is that because some people skedaddle out in 4 years because they are superstars and others take 10 years because your dissertation support sucks?) 2. Do you have a travel fund for students? How much can students get to travel to conferences? Do they have to be presenting in order to travel? 3. Definitely placement rates, but not only that but WHERE people are ending up. Are students ending up in large research universities or small teaching colleges, are both? Are they only ending up in cultural studies/gender studies departments or do they find themselves in sociology and anthropology departments too, or elsewhere? Anyone at non-academic jobs that may be appealing to you, like UNESCO or WHO or World Bank? (Some programs don't keep accurate numbers, but professors should be able to recall where recent graduates have gone. If the professors can't remember ANY names or very few, that's a red flag.) 4. This you can answer yourself, but take a look at the doctoral handbooks of both places. What are the coursework requirements? What are the comprehensive exams like? What are the procedures to get your dissertation out the door? In my field, some schools have more formalized qualifying exams whereas other schools only require the submission of a publishable paper or grant. 5. What kinds of professionalization experiences do students typically do with advisors? Do they coauthor papers? Co-write grants? Do students tend to get external fellowship or grant aid for their research? 6. You might ask for a recent calendar of events - look at who's come to speak at the department, how often they have seminars and colloquia and brown bags and all that stuff. In really good departments you can sometimes have the opportunity to meet some big names and important people and network with them. My department has brought some phenomenal people in and always give the grad students at least a half hour to mingle with the exclusively - and usually they plan a special lunch just for the grad students and the speaker. I met Michael Marmot this way - he's HUGE in my field. 7. You also may want to talk to graduate students and get this from their perspective about professionalization. For example, in my department our DGS and departmental coordinator send around job ads, calls for papers, and funding announcements ALL the time. We have a prolific new faculty member who started offering a grant-writing workshop in our department. The DGS reserves a brown bag each April for student research presentations. We're required to submit yearly progress reports and I know our DGS personally reads each one because she responds to them all. These are the things that professors may not even know are going on, or not think about to mention to you, but that grad students find important.

I'd take the UConn offer. From what it sounds like, the location is better for your research (especially with access to Yale); you like the faculty and they seem willing to help you, and you have an actually livable stipend and summer support. The TA thing is also pretty big; TAing takes up a lot of additional time and if you don't have those responsibilities in your first year, you can spend more time focusing on research and your own coursework. I don't know a whole lot about the humanities but from what I've heard, it's not as important to have someone doing exactly what you want to do at your target program. I'm in the social sciences and I came to work with someone who was doing research related to, but not exactly within, my interests. I ended up really falling in love with the topic I do research on now in a big way, and I think I want to focus in this area for my entire research career. Also my mentor has given me a lot of freedom and flexibility in the kinds of projects I've wanted to do. I'm not really sure what you are asking about the MA program; them having a lot of MA students might mean that they simply have an attractive English MA program for whateverason Maybe they have a lot of undergrads who stay on; maybe it's the most cost-effective + well-reputed program for PA residents.

Nope. I'm currently investigating a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn State. It is very well suited to my interests; there are people there doing the kind of research that I want to be doing; they're highly regarded within my field; and furthermore, I'm sure that my own university is involved in all kinds of unethical crap that they simply haven't been caught at (I mean, we planned the Manhattan Project and are currently using eminent domain to take away private business holdings from business owners in Harlem so we can build more Columbia). I don't see your students being late to class for a morally reprehensible reason being any different from them being late to class because they were attending a pro-choice rally or a meeting on microfinance…they shouldn't be late to class. Doesn't matter why! When you go to conferences, people will give each other a look when they hear the name "Penn State." Doubt it. When I think of "Penn State" I think "huh, great public university, really good human development and family studies department, sweet methodology center." The vast majority of scholars is not going to look down upon a scholar for studying at a great university that happened to have a football scandal they had nothing to do with before they even got there - not now, and certainly not 6-10 years from now. It'd be different if the department were caught out for falsifying data or something like that. I hesitate to be a part of a campus that thinks they're the best public college in the country...what are they ranked by most polls, like...50th or something? You want to applaud their research, great, but they are not the only university out there. Every college thinks they're the best. Who wants to go to a school where people are chanting "We're number two!" or "We're not that great, but we're pretty decent a least!"? (And out of public colleges, they are certainly not 50th. US News ranks them as the #13 public school in the nation, tied with UIUC, UT-Austin, and University of Washington. And top 50 in the national university rankings is actually quite good.) Here's the rub - how can you be absolutely certain that none of the other universities you've applied to have not had similar instances and have just been better at covering it up? No university is 100 percent ethical; how do you choose which is better and which is not?

YES. Some people will tell you that they are not. In virtually all cases, THEY ARE. Any amount that is not used to pay for tuition and required fees (so your entire stipend) is taxable. Furthermore, sometimes your university will not withhold taxes so you will have to withhold them yourself and pay them in April. Just because they don't withhold the money doesn't mean you don't owe! I also would not recommend getting your taxes done by one of those H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, etc. places unless you are referred by a fellow grad student who got their taxes done there. One year I went to H&R Block to get my taxes done thinking they might save me a few hundred dollars (I typically owe about $4,000-5,000 on my NSF every year). Nope, I ended up paying the exact same amount in taxes and I had to pay H&R Block $240 for the pleasure of telling me so. (This doesn't include a professional tax accountant, though.) I've also found that everyone is utterly unhelpful. The financial aid office doesn't want to run the risk of giving you the wrong information, so they give very little out, and NSF is not helpful with it either. I've heard the NIH also is not helpful.

I thought about this a lot this weekend during my prospectives weekend. I'm in psychology, a field that straddles the STEM and social science world - we have laboratories and do experiments and my department primarily focuses on cognitive psychology, experimental social psychology and neuroscience. And in any case, I am the only black female student in the entire department. Our cohorts are about 6-12 students in size and any given year we have 5 full cohorts and sort of parts of a 6th in residence, so I'd say that there are anywhere from 40-60 grad students in the department. There are two black guys (one of the other black guys is in my cohort) and then me. I can only speak as a student at my own institution, but honestly it's far better than I thought it would be. My classmates treat me like one of them. I don't feel that they tiptoe around my race, but they don't bring it up unnecessarily either. I don't feel overtly discriminated against by professors, and in fact I think they do their best to try to include me in things. I feel welcomed and a part of my department, and I don't feel like people here don't take me seriously as a researcher because of my gender or race. Our department is mixed pretty equally as far as gender goes, so that definitely has a lot to do with the gender part. I think it is kind of assumed that I will be interested in racial research topics, but that doesn't bother me because I AM. Most of the stuff I experience is more covert and institutional, not any one particular person's "fault." For example, you walk into the library or the department and all the historical paintings of trustees, alumni, professors and and important friends of the university are of old white men. It seems silly, but it sort of gives you the impression that for 250 years this university was totally fine without you; you are an interloper, an invader, not part of the legacy of the place. Or when a classmate of mine makes a casual remark that it must be "so hard" to find a community sample of black gay men in my major US city (news flash: it really isn't). That wasn't intentionally mean or anything, and he was actually lauding my study, but it's like one of those squint-your-eye moments. Or when you're constantly thinking about racial effects even when no one else is, but you don't want to be "that person" to ask about it during class. I once had a jerk professor in class who did research on power in the workplace tell me that racial and gender considerations were "just demographics," so why would I be asking about them, and just refused to answer my question and moved onto someone else. And in psychology, a lot of the experiments use the subject pool. Well, I go to an elite private university so our subject pool is overwhelmingly white, aged 18 to 22, and middle- to upper-middle-class or higher. I sometimes wonder about their research findings and their applicability outside of the lab. Or it's just like the only black people I see around the department - with the exception of two professors, are working construction or custodial services or at best administrative support in the front office. It's sort of depressing when you look for role models in the faculty and there really aren't many of you. And that's also true when you're looking at positions in the future to become a professor, and you're realizing that you'll be interviewing with a department full of white people, mostly older white men. I got my hair braided over the winter break and I was a bit worried about how people would receive it in the department. Would people perceive me as more black, and thus more militant and less suited for a research career, if I interviewed or presented in braids? What about my natural hair (I'm transitioning)? You always wonder about these things when you are the Only One, but at a certain point I had to give it up and recognize that I don't WANT to be at places where people are wondering if I'm going to burn the building down just because I have a 'fro. But overall, I've had a great experience. Very rarely do I wonder "Did they do that because I'm black/a black woman?" People treat me the same. And there's tons of money. Everybody wants to give me money!

It also depends a lot on your program. Some programs have a very grassroots, social justice, organic personality to them that welcomes the background experiences and social positions of their students, faculty and researchers as important parts of their drive and their work. My department is like that, so someone sharing that - for instance - they were raped as a child and that drives their research on the long-term effects of sexual assault on children, or that they were a sex worker before and so they are interested in the mental health of sex workers - that wouldn't elicit much if any negativity. But for other programs, this would be a taboo thing because those programs believe that you're supposed to have a dispassionate connection to your research. My secondary department is more like this. So there are some things that people in my primary cohort and department know about me that I would not share in my secondary cohort and department. Mental illness, however, is always a tricky problem even in the "organic" departments I described before. That's because of stigma; you don't want people wondering if you're going to drop out or drop the ball because of a history or current mental illness. That's unfair, and discriminatory, but it's the reality of the situation as of right now, so you may want to be more careful about disclosing mental health status. (This is also true of many chronic physical health issues and disabilities.)

Given that you said you only had about 20 minutes while your advisor is distracted, I agree that you need to email him to set up a meeting - a real one, one that lasts at least 30 minutes and is you two sitting down and talking. If he refuses to give you 30 minutes of undistracted time, then perhaps you do need another advisor. If he will give the time, though, I think you need to very straightforwardly ask him why he thinks you are not committed. What, to him, is exhibiting commitment? Is he a reasonable person, or is he one of those "if you're not working 100 hours a week then you are not committed"? Think about his feedback critically, separating your own hurt emotions from it. It's entirely possible that he simply dislikes you and that he's saying this because he dislikes you, but it's just as possible (without knowing more about the situation) that he is truly trying to help you and that you *aren't* showing commitment. Before you run immediately to changing, try to engage in a dialogue with your advisor. Why doesn't he think you are showing commitment? What can you do to show more commitment? What kinds of things does he expect you to do? Then if he gives you those answers, you can assess your next steps. If they seem like reasonable criticisms and you are willing to change, you can make the necessary changes. Or you may decide that you really do want to switch, but at least you will have full information and a reason why when you go to your DGS. FWIW, I had a friend in our MPH program who changed her advisor in March of her second year. She had significant difficulties with her previous advisor, and needed to make the switch. It did take her the summer to graduate - so she got her MPH in October instead of May. I don't think the spring of your first year is too late to change, but I think you need to have a concrete, clear reason for switching advisors aside from just a general unease with this person. Thanks for your insight. I'm sure you are absolutely correct that I took this too personally and that is definitely a flaw of mine in general. I think part of my reaction is that, to be honest, I don't think he is particularly committed to me as an advisee. As I mentioned in a previous post, it is hard to get him to take the time to discuss my ideas and plans- the conversation we had today only happened at all because he had me follow him to lunch in a spare 20 minutes he had before class. I feel pretty disrespected that he picked a moment where he was wolfing down his lunch and about to run out the door to tell me that he doesn't think I am committed- it didn't allow me to ask him to elaborate OR defend myself. I also think you hit the nail on the head with the issue of my thesis topic. It's true, I am NOT 100% enthused and I honestly feel like I may have accepted my offer under somewhat misleading pretenses. When I interviewed with him, he told me that I would be able to do a field work with him and have a particular focus. Now, that is not panning out and I am not being given the research opportunities I thought I would be. I think I will take your advice and seek out the advice of another potential advisor. It sucks to admit this myself, by I think my advisor and I are just a bad match in general- both in terms of research interests and in terms of personality.

In May? Your classwork may already be finished by then - my academic year is over the second week of May, so it's possible that you won't actually miss any class. Check your academic calendar. However, if it's early enough in May you may be missing finals, which is completely unacceptable. I don't think any professor is going to allow you to do that when you know in advance you can't make it. If you're on a quarter schedule or something else when class will be in full swing in May, then you can't miss two full weeks. (What kind of summer job has a 2-week training during May? If it's designed for students, you may find that it's scheduled for later in May to try to get students who have already finished school.)

I don't undersatnd what else you think you can do, aside from starting over in another lab? You're only a year and a half in, and it's very common for students in the social sciences and natural/physical sciences to switch labs in their first two years of graduate school. I don't see why that should mean it will take you a ridiculous amount of time to graduate. If you don't have enough physics to operate in the lab that you were already in, then you need to do one of two things: 1) learn more physics or 2) switch to a lab in which you need less physics. If you want to stay in your current lab, talk to your (ex-)PI and ask if it would be possible for you to catch up if you took some undergraduate physics classes as a supplement. But if you don't have enough physics and are not willing or able to beef up the physics you need to succeed in the lab, why would you want to stay in that lab in the first place? You don't have the background you need to succeed.

If you're trying to earn extra money, that's unlikely with an RAship. You may be able to with a TAship - here we can TA for extra compensation if we have external funding. But if you just want the work, that should be easy to arrange at any institution. You just have to ask the appropriate professor if you could serve as an RA for them. For TAing, sometimes there's an organizer of all the assignments so you have to find out who that is.

The student population is so diverse and there are so many different ways to get a job (or not get a job) that I really don't think most people will fall into the "average" bin. But that is the definition of "average." Statistically speaking, 68% of students will fall within one standard deviation of the mean. So if the average salary is $40K, with a standard deviation of $10K, that means that 68% of graduates made between about $30,000 and $50,000 upon graduation. 95% made between $20,000 and $60,000 upon graduation. If this information is consistent from year to year taking into account inflation, I think that's helpful information, especially when students are considering loan packages; maybe fewer of them would decide to borrow $100K+ when attending undergrad. Think of it like a really hard test where a small number of people got 90% and everyone else scored 30%. The average might be something like 60% or 70%, but the truth is that most people did not even pass. Well, this is the problem with the arithmetic mean. First of all, we can also present median salary data, which isn't skewed by high or low outliers. Second of all, realistically speaking, it's unlikely that if you look at graduates within a certain range of graduating (salary of first job out of college, for example, or salaries only for those who graduated 3 or 5 years ago or less) that there will be enough outliers that will make such a high salary that they significantly skew the results. This is also similar to an article published last year (Wall Street Journal maybe?) where it listed % employment by major. It made news in the Astronomy community because Astronomy majors in college had a 0.0% unemployment rate. That sounds really awesome -- you're going to get a job for sure if you are an astro major! But that kind of statistic is too broad and ultimately useless -- they might have jobs in completely unrelated fields and the ones with jobs in astronomy likely went to grad school afterwards too. Not to mention other problems like the small number of astronomy majors surveyed. It's not completely useless, it's just that it's been presented without qualification and so it's less useful than it could be. I'm a data nerd so clearly I'm biased; more data can be good. The problem is that generally speaking, people aren't very good at understanding descriptive statistical data and using it to make decisions (or at least in my observation, they're not). I think it's because people like to see themselves as unique and different and thus often assume that statistical data don't apply to them - sure, everyone else might have made about $30K coming out of college, but *I* am going to make $70K because I'm special and brilliant. So with the example that you gave, part of the problem is smaller sample sizes - there are fewer astronomy majors than English majors, for example. But even if they do have jobs in seemingly unrelated fields...so what? What that may mean is that there's a clear value for the kinds of skills astronomy majors possess/learn in college. I think the problem is that this level of data is so superficial; we don't know WHY astronomy majors (or mathematics majors, who also have very low unemployment rates) have really low unemployment rates because no one has studied it. We can make assumptions or educated guesses about that. Mine is that astronomy is pretty heavy in mathematics and analytical skills, and astronomy majors usually have to take significant coursework in physics as well, so they may find themselves able to apply their work in a variety of fields aside from astronomy. Particularly in a world that values information science and technical and analytical skill, they may find those things in high demand. * I think that this particular information will be kind of pointless, though. First of all, how is it going to be presented to incoming freshman and/or current college students? If they're going to have to go to the career center to get it, only a fraction of them will see it (and the most highly motivated ones at that. I never went to my career center as an undergrad). Second of all, I don't think it will get people to change majors on any significant level. There are some majors that have higher salaries simply because those sectors have higher salaries right now, but an English major who wants to go into publishing isn't likely to suddenly decide that he wants to be a civil engineer one day because he saw the salary report. Maybe some students will avoid some fields with historically high unemployment (like architecture), but for the more traditional liberal arts, non-vocational majors - majors don't lead directly into jobs anyway. A psychology major could go work in HR and eventually become a business executive; a philosophy major could learn to program and become a software engineer; an art major may go to medical school; a math major may do market research; a physics major may become a science fiction novelist. And so on.