openspacem7

Hey All, Do any of you have any experience with internationals finding funding at Berkeley? I got funding for year one but no promise beyond that, (ERG department, historically low on cash as a department but with ok-funded profs). The system there strikes me as a dog-eat-dog game for research assistant or instructor positions as not all departments guarantee funding. I also know that advancing to doctoral candidacy makes things easier in terms of fees. So, I was wondering how easy is it to find a position as a graduate student researcher in the sciences? Do professors throw stuff at you or is it hard to locate people with grants? I would really appreciate your help!

Yes, those credentials sound ok. Look for the DAAD New York website (they have a very large presence in NYC) and just give these people a call. They're super nice and very eager to help you. There are also generous scholarships available to Americans. I would recommend TU Dresden, TU Berlin, RWTH Aachen, Munich, Karlsruhe (not necessarily in that order). Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for your thoughts on this - I have indeed thought about incorporating my social science ambitions into quantitative biology. However, I do not want to bend my academic interests into something to make it fit. I feel this is potentially dangerous. The right step for me would be to withdraw because I can no longer sincerely support the ambitions put forth in that doctoral program. However, life choice-wise, I realize it may be a bad thing to withdraw from such a prestigious university and I might not get a similar opportunity again and regret this decision. Starting there would be taking a significant risk - that I may not be able to switch disciplines and end up miserable in my program and have to leave eventually, something that I would find hard to negotiate. How is it looked upon if one leaves with a Master's and embarks on a different discipline afterwards?

Dear All, I find myself in a little fix and have seen that many students here get really good advice on what to do. I am about to start a graduate program at a very good school and, since applying and accepting my offer, many things have happened, including the notion that I want to cross over into another discipline altogether. The switch is about as dramatic as it can get: from a quantitative, natural science discipline to political science. Now, I think of withdrawing from the program in advance to work in my newly desired field or possibly attend and request a change of department after building some relationship with professors in the new department. After all, the new discipline requires much more I graduate from a good school to attain a job in academia. I would greatly appreciate any stories about this having happened before or any general advice from people with graduate school experience. Do these changes of department that involve a complete cross-over happen at very competitive schools? After all, many good students apply to the new department and why would they make a spot for a student from a different discipline? How do these somewhat unorthodox crossings work? Thank you so much for your responses!