Golden Monkey

May 1??? That's completely ridiculous. It truly amazes me that after so many decades and decades of graduate and undergraduate admissions, the universities have not made any attempt to settle on some kind of rough unified schedule.

The positive side of this is that we'll be in a very low tax bracket.

I think I'd take the PhD and think that, for once, two birds in the bush might be better than one in the hand, but it really depends on your financial situation. I would guess (and it's only a guess mind you,) that a PhD in English would open more doors long-term. Oddly enough, I found myself in nearly the exact situation today, so this is a really timely subject. I had an interview today for a job (I don't know if I got it, mind you,) but if I did, the income would be orders of magnitude more than the stipend I've been offered to pursue a PhD. The job, at a company that seems great overall, is using the same technology I'd be developing in the PhD program. The difference is the job is in advertising, and the PhD would be using the same technology for educational purposes. So if I get a job offer (maybe they won't, and that will make things a lot easier,) it will be developing methods to convince people to buy more useless crap, as opposed to developing methods of learning. Of course, one route pays about 3-4 times as much as the other route. If the company offers me a job (I'd almost be relieved if they didn't,) I will have to listen to "Crossroad Blues" repeatedly.

Have you tried hotpads.com?

In one application, I uploaded it to an external site, then included the link.

Yes, I'm headed out there next week and will be doing exactly that. I'm guessing that in the technology fields, it might be a little easier to find (?)

I also thought the same thing about ones chosen field. If your field is "Medieval Stuff," I'm sure the politics are horrible, and the job prospects are dismal. Do people with PhDs in computer science or engineering feel this way too? Also, she mentions giving up 6-10 years of "prime incoming-earning years." Since about 2005 or 2006 or so, these have definitely not been "prime" years for a lot of us. The job market has been dismal, and a lot of us working stiffs have been working for a fraction of the income we used to have before the economy tanked.

I did the same thing. While pay is terrible at university jobs, the benefits are great, such as free/discounted tuition.

Think you should be hearing very soon. They send out a pdf file.

So no one applied for grants/fellowships after the first year?

Thanks, this is very helpful, especially with the "don't take any additional work during the school year" part, which was one of the questions I had. The area actually has a pretty low cost of living. I'm not so worried about working during the summers, as I am finding work during the summers in this wretched economy. My standard of living is already pretty low. I'm currently a university employee, where the pay is terrible, so I'm kind of used to doing without, have not owned a car in 4 years, haven't had TV in 10 years, eat out about once every three months (you can just call me "Mister Excitement" ) which is how I've managed to put away money in the first place. A lot of us working stiffs have been in "survival mode" since the economy went south in 2005-2006 anyway, so going from one level of spartan living to another level of spartan living probably won't be that big of a deal. Still, even with a considerable safety cushion, this makes me kinda nervous.

Sorry for the dumb questions, but people here have been really helpful and tolerant of my stupid questions, so I figured I'd ask one more. I found this database of typical stipends: http://chronicle.com/stats/stipends/ This made me realize that, factoring in the health insurance and cost of living, the offer I received was pretty typical compared to other universities. It also made me realize that thousands of others are somehow making this work, so there must be something I'm missing. Is the usual procedure to: Dip into saving/take out loans for the first year to get by, then apply for outside funding?Take on a second job (when allowed?)Something I don't know about? I guess one of the advantages of being so much older than the typical grad student is that I have money put away, so I could probably float myself for a while, but I was kind of hoping not to do that. For those of you already in funded programs, how did you handle this? And for those of you being baffled by the same question, what's your plan?

I guess for me, the path I'd eventually like to take is an either/or thing. A TT job would be great, but an R&D think-tanky job would also be great. I don't know if others think of their "what ifs," like "what if I had decided to do this at the normal age?" but all you have to do is look at CVs of people the same age as you who are in TT positions, then compare your CV to theirs. Yes, sure pursuing a PhD would have resulted in more papers published, conferences, classes taught, etc., but in my case it also would have resulted in much less real-world industry experience. When I looked at CVs of professors my age, I realized that they had little-to-no industry experience, and I wouldn't want to be in that situation either. Which gets us almost back to the original subject of LORs/CVs for us older people. When I was re-writing my long-form CV (as opposed to my short-form resume,) I was stumped as to what to put in the papers published, conferences, classes taught, exhibitions, etc. I mean, I had nothing to put in that section, even after completing my master's. So then I looked at all the high-profile industry projects I had worked on since the early 90s, and reformatted those in CV format and listed them instead. Not sure how impressive that was to adcomms, but I thought it looked pretty good.

I also wonder if the age bias is a bit less prevalent for those of us in technology-related fields? With my one admission so far, they seem to be more impressed with my years of closely-related industry work than anything else. I most certainly wouldn't have had that at a younger age.

Do you think this is really true? 45 is only halfway through ones expected lifespan and career. Geez, you still have 20 years left to work, so I don't get why 45 seems too old for TT positions.

Yep, I'm 43. Started my master's at 40 and have one PhD admit. To the OP, I'd use employers/colleagues. When I applied for my master's I had been out of school for so long (aside from a class here and there,) that any profs I'd had in the past wouldn't have remembered me or would have been retired by then anyway.

I think I'd suggest going that route. FWIW, I actually waited (and waited and waited) until I had enough money put away so that I knew I could pay off my student loan at any time. Of course, that also made me 12 years older than everyone else, so I don't necessarily suggest going to these extremes. But then after starting the program, a university job opened up, and I took that and got almost-free tuition as a result. So I finished my master's (about $88k worth,) with only a very small loan, which I paid off. If you reapply next year, perhaps you'll get more financial aid/funding the second time around, or you could look for a university job, which gets you free/discounted tuition.

I installed the new Ubuntu 10.1 on my laptop last night. It's really nice, prettier than ever, and has the new Ubuntu Cloud storage feature, which I haven't tried out yet. For people who do mainly word processing, spreadsheets, and internet access, it works great. So in the whole Mac vs Windows debate, the third alternative is neither.

Heh, I don't even have the 3 dogs and 2 cats. Nothing to feed, but me. And my one acceptance is in a very inexpensive part of the country, but it's still a very, very small stipend, and the thought of trying to live on it is terrifying to me. I also wonder about not being able to contribute to my retirement for a few years. When I was 25, I wouldn't have thought twice about this, but at this age, I really have to think carefully about this.

I'm really glad you delurked and hope you're still reading this thread. As a 43-year-old with one PhD acceptance, one rejection, and two have-not-heard-from-yets, I'm really vacillating on this. How are you finding the situation financially? Even though I don't have kids or a spouse, the thought of living well below the poverty level for a while is really.... I guess I would have thrown all caution to the wind when I was in my 20s, but in my 40s, things are not so simple, even with no dependents.

I had no funding for my master's. I had a scholarship plus a loan, but that was it. I lucked out and got a job with the university, though, and went from being a full-time student to part-time, but got almost-free tuition after that.

While this was a truly awful thing to go through, your writeup of it is pretty hilarious! Grasping at straws, I know... But I'd love to go to a Douche Bag University football game just to hear the cheers. "Rah Rah Roo! Douche Bag U!"

Oooh... good to know. I did think it seemed very, very odd that people would be able to line up funding without being in a program already, and I wondered, "how is this possible???"