TakeruK

Here are some questions that I asked current graduate students in programs I visited and what students have asked me! Some of the more... "sensitive"(?) questions tend to work best over something like Skype or even better, at an in-person meeting during something like orientation or prospective student visit days, rather than email though. I also wouldn't recommend directly asking some of these questions as ice-breakers, get to know the other person a bit first 1. Are you happy in your program? 2. How often do you TA? What has your TA experience been like? Do you like it? 3. Do you feel that the department and professor care about your success? 4. Where else did you apply and visit? What made you choose this school over others? 5. Do you ever regret the choice you made? 6. What's one thing you wish you could change about the current grad program? 7. What do you know about working for Prof _____? (usually best if it's their advisor) What is his/her advising style like? Do you enjoy working with them? 8. Is the stipend enough to live on? Are you able to save each year? Do you have to take out additional loans? 9. What is the weather like year-round here? How hot/cold does it get? 10. What is the rent like? How much do students usually pay? What parts of town are good places to live? 11. Is this city a safe place to live? Do you feel safe walking on the streets at night? 12. Do you know any students who are married? Have children? Is the school/department/professor supportive of students with families? (this was important to me but maybe not to everyone) 13. How many students were accepted this year? How many accepted last year, etc.... What's the average number of people that come into the program each year (some people are more hesitant to accept if there's a good chance they might be the only person in their year, or e.g. the only woman/man/minority/etc) 14. What is the atmosphere like between students in the department? Is it friendly? Competitive? Quiet? What about between the professors? 15. Do the students in the department socialize together a lot? 16. How many students graduate per year? How often is it that students fail a qualifying or candidacy exam? Are they allowed to retake them and is it automatic retake or do you have to petition for a retake (and how often are the petitions successful). 17. If summer funding is separate from the school year and you need to apply separately, how often are students successful? 18. What are the courses like at this school? How much time are we expected to spend on time (vs. research). I always answer these questions honestly when I am asked and I know most grad students definitely don't mind taking some time out of their day to provide this type of information.

I understand that you are upset at not hearing anything, but it is not uncommon for rejected applicants to never get an official rejection. If you apply for a job but they decide to hire someone else, you often do not hear about it either. In both of these contexts, if you don't hear back within an reasonable amount of time then you were supposed to assume a rejection. I am not defending their actions, I think both jobs and grad schools should let the applicants know when all of the spots have been filled. And I think your second email is not going to help you. It comes with completely the wrong tone for the situation. For most schools I applied to and remember reading the terms of the application fee, you are not paying for any "service". The people that review your application (at the department level) generally have nothing to do with the application fee (taken at the university level). Graduate admissions is generally not a "business" either and applicants are not "customers". And honestly, asking to speak to a supervisor is a little bit silly since your email now really sounds like you are a disgruntled customer, but the school does not owe you any "service".

I started my relationship before grad school and got married one year into it. We were not in exactly the same situation--our relationship was several years old when grad school started and my SO moved with me to grad school because we knew that we wanted to get married fairly soon! However, I think having this new guy consider moving with you to New Haven after your Fulbright is finished sounds like something you might want to consider! Definitely don't want to be lecturing, but I should point out that both of you owe it to each other to discuss both options (you not attending grad school to live near him, and him moving to New Haven to be with you) before either of you make the big decision to move! But also it sounds like you two might not be at this stage yet since it's a new relationship and you're definitely doing the Fulbright anyways so this is probably something you can talk about in a year after the "honeymoon" stage is over, probably? That is, it sounds like you have about another year or so to explore this relationship before you really have to decide relationship, grad school, or some compromise! I agree with everything that Grimnir and bsharpe said! I know many couples (with one or both partners in academia) who are able to compromise on locations in order for both people to be happy--stuff like one person doing grad school and the other working, then they switch, etc. I'd say have fun exploring this relationship, find out how much it will mean to you in the long term and then make the best decision for yourself I hope knowing that there are others in grad school that overcame similar experiences is helpful. Good luck!

I cannot agree more with what fuzzy said! Especially the part about choosing a personality/compatibility fit over an exact research match! Here are some things I did when selecting my MSc and PhD advisors that I found helpful: 1. During a one-on-one talk (or Skype), usually during the "prospective student visit" type events, it's really a two-way interview. They ask you questions about yourself but you're allowed to ask questions too! If this has already passed for you, you can still schedule a Skype talk with the excuse/reason being "I need to select an advisor and would like to talk to you about some projects/working with you". You're allowed to ask them questions about non-academic things! I usually ask my potential advisors about things like their hobbies. One person replied that [their field] is their only passion....yikes, huge red flag for me! You can also gauge the tone of the conversation**--some of these meetings were strictly business and we only ever talked about research. This generally made me feel not like working with them. I feel the best connection personally when our conversation is more informal--it might start with just us talking about ourselves and move onto research, or it might start with research and then we go off on tangents about our own lives. For me, I like this second style better and even now when I meet with my advisor, we spend some time in our regular meetings talking about non-research related things. I personally need this to feel that I can connect / click with someone. **Note: Sometimes this is tough to gauge on an initial meeting, especially depending on how you set up the meeting in the first place. My method is to frame the request to talk as a "I would like to talk to you about starting grad school this fall" or something like that and then keep the flow of conversation professional but not rigid / limited to work only. I feel a lot more at ease if the prof is the one that makes the transition to talking about non-work related things! But that's just me 2. You can always talk to current students about the prof's advising styles. It might be tough to randomly ask this to someone you've never met though. Usually prospective student visit is a good time to do this. If that has already happened, did you go to your school's visit days and connected with some of the students? Maybe you can email them now and ask to have a chat or something! 3. I found it really helpful to find papers that the potential supervisor has coauthored with their graduate students. Do they let their grad student write the paper (i.e. and have first authorship?) or are they always the first author? (And compare to the norms for your field). What kinds of projects are their students writing up--are they new contributions to the field or did the prof write up the first paper about the method/model and the students just churn out data analysis / derivative works based on the first paper? How often do their students publish? Are the students doing the level of work you hope to achieve?

The people I know who own their homes in grad school have most of the following: 1. No student debt 2. Low cost of living area (i.e. low home prices) 3. High stipend (compared to cost of living) 4. Some help/co-investment from family (either having two incomes and/or having parents help with a downpayment etc.) The only thing I have going for me is no debt (thank you Canada) and two incomes as my spouse also works. I don't imagine being able to buy even a townhouse in our hometown (one of the most expensive markets in North America) until our family income at least passes the $70k/year range though. This might happen during my post-doc years, but the transient nature of post-doc might mean it's tough to commit to buying a home. At this point, I think the best plan for me is to wait until we've found a location that we'll stay for at least 4-5 years (grad school was one such scenario but we don't make enough to own a home in this current city!). Meanwhile, we'll just keep trying to save as much as we can (at least there's no debt!).

I really agree with this. The only reviews I ever see of apartment buildings/managers are usually on the landlord's website, which are obviously not reliable! Sometimes I see 1 or 2 yelp reviews but the nature of the reviews leave me dubious that I would have the same experiences (i.e. they are sometimes extremely entitled people that expected their landlords to do things like change their lightbulbs for them or have very strange and specific experiences!)

It depends on the student and their target score. I wrote it twice. The first time, I started to study about a month before and then decided to not apply to US schools and didn't study any further. However, I forgot exactly why but I wrote the test anyways (maybe it was because I wanted a trial run or maybe because it was too late to get my money back) and scored 640 (44th percentile or something like that). The second time around, 2 years later, I spent probably around 4 hours per week for 8-12 weeks and it didn't do much more for me. I scored 690 (53rd percentile). When I had applied to PhD programs, there was no "ScoreSelect" so schools saw both of my scores. I applied to only "physics-derivative" fields, like Astro and Planetary Science, so the PGRE isn't as high (my target score was 750 but oh well). I got into top programs in both Astro (more physics oriented) and Planetary Science (less physics oriented) programs without any real issues despite both of my scores. So, I think if I was a little better at taking multiple choice time limited physics tests, 2-3 months should have been enough time for me to score something like 750. I know a lot of other students who are really good at physics / test taking and studied a lot more (according to their reports, about 10 hours per week for 2-3 months) and they scored in the 900 range. Personally, I don't think it is a good investment of time to spend more than 2-3 months to prepare for the PGRE. But how much time per week is also important. I think 4 hours or so per week is probably a good minimum (I had a Masters program to finish too!) but probably not enough to score very high unless you are very good at the physics GRE. But probably better to spend say 10 hours per week for 2-3 months than 5 hours per week for 4-6 months, in my opinion.

This depends on field and your department culture. I asked the same of the grad students at my current school before I got here. What I think is a good idea is to first figure out a research idea so that you have something solid to talk about instead of just a "hypothetical project". I would recommend involving someone at your current school (i.e. a collaboration between you, a prof at your school and an outside prof) because: 1) your current school is spending resources on you (even if you are funded by NSF, you are still taking up a spot in their classes, a desk in their building etc.) and thus would reasonably expect you to devote your full time equivalent work to projects that benefit your school/department 2) your school may have rules about what counts towards your dissertation--ideally you would want everything you do in grad school count towards your PhD so it's not a good idea for you or anyone if your side projects do not help you reach graduation milestones Many graduate students definitely use conferences and other network opportunities to develop potential contacts for future collaborations. Either way, you should keep all these ideas in mind and when a logical collaboration comes up (i.e. your work with your current advisor starts to cross into one of your contacts' work and you feel that a collaboration might be beneficial) then you should propose it to your advisor and if they approve, reach out to your potential outside collaborator. That's how it might work in my field anyways.

I have to say this (the part I bolded) is true for me too, especially when I have to live in the same house as my family for more than 1 week. It's just really weird to go from independence to staying in my childhood bedroom again etc. It's not quite true for me that our relationship works better at a distance though, I definitely would like to eventually live in the same city as my family again, and I would love to spend some time with my parents once a week or something, but living in the same home again is definitely trying. In the far future, perhaps having them live in my home instead of the other way around might work out though.

You have the right to ask for anything you want. But if the lease says the monthly rent is $650 (or $625?) and you have a receipt for $1250, it is clear that you have paid for 2 months rent with that payment. They cannot say that "oh well, since rent is only $625, we'll just take the remainder as a donation!". As with any lease, you should keep a copy of ALL of your payments (i.e. receipts or cancelled checks) and when it is time to move out, if they demand more rent from you, you can pull out all of your receipts and if you lived there for X months then you will be fine if all your receipts add up to $625*X (exception: if rent increases then you have to account for that too of course).

I'm in a field where arxiv is used a lot but I don't really think it really counts as an "article finder". It's more of a pre-print server where people can upload their work before it goes through the super slow peer review process (or some choose to wait until peer review is finished but there's still a few weeks turnaround between acceptance and publication). I subscribe to the nightly arxiv email list that tells me the titles, authors and abstracts of everything posted to the "Earth and Planetary Science" subsection of the arxiv. I use this as a way to see what is new in the field rather than to search for stuff previously written. It's nice to see a name of someone I know (e.g. former colleague or someone I met at a conference) and I keep an eye peeled for topics I'm currently working on. I basically use arxiv to keep up to date on my field's work like I use Facebook to keep up to date on my friends' social activities For finding already written articles, I mostly use the ADS (http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/) for astrophysics work. Even though I am subscribed to "earth and planetary science" updates and I'm in a Earth science department, I'm an imposter since I mostly only work on exoplanet stuff, which is generally published in astronomy journals rather than the earth science ones that GeoDUDE! listed (although I am at least familiar with what those are ). When I have to find something that is not indexed by ADS (e.g. I want to find something in GRL), I use Web of Science or Google Scholar. Personally, I never actually go to a journal and look through its contents (either online or *gasp* a print edition). I suppose that if I didn't have something like arxiv to tell me what's new, I probably might want to skim the Table of Contents for the main journals in my field, but my main mode of finding literature about my topic is to directly search for the keywords in a search engine and coming across the article in whatever journal it happens to be in, instead of starting at the journal and finding things that are interesting.

Home is closer for me than yours but about 1 week per year seem to work well for me. In my first year, my SO and I were flying home a lot to plan our wedding so we made 3 trips home lasting a total of 4 weeks. Then we didn't go home again for another year (we left my MSc school, went home for a week and then moved to PhD school). Then I visited home for about a week the following summer. Now, it's been just over a year since I visited home and I probably won't be able to go back again until later this fall or next spring. It's a little ironic that at MSc school, going home was a 16 hour trip (long bus ride, long airport wait due to bus/plane schedules, long plane ride) and now it's just a 4 hour trip but I have only went home once at PhD school! However, it's pretty tough to get home given that 1) my spouse has very limited vacation days and we prefer to use it to see new places in the world rather than going home and 2) we have limited money to travel and we prefer to use it to see new places rather than going home. Also, almost all of our friends have left our hometown (grad school or other careers) so although we still miss it and we enjoy visiting, we no longer feel a purpose to go home. Seeing our families is great though and really is the only reason to go home. Fortunately, our parents are older and retired now so they visit us sometimes too (we last went home a year ago but we just saw our families a few months ago). In the future, we are planning to meet our parents in some new interesting place we always wanted to visit -- that way, we get to both see family and travel to a new place all on the same budget and vacation days! Similarly, our friends are no longer in our hometown so we also tend to visit them while we're traveling. For my friends in my field, I see them at our national society's annual meeting. I am going to a conference in the UK next month (and my spouse is joining me afterwards for a vacation) and we're going to see some friends who either happen to be traveling to the UK too and others who now live over there. So, in a way, after 4 years in grad school, I do feel less of a pull to go home. But like people said in the other thread, I think it's more peoplesick than homesick, and after 4 years, most of the people I miss are either dispersed around the world and/or have more time/money to be the ones visiting us instead of the other way around! However, now that it's been over a year, I really really do want to get home again sometime soon--there's just no time!

If you are leaving friday afternoon and returning before monday morning, it won't even matter that you are not around that weekend. It's the weekend, no one will expect you to be around. As bhr said, you might miss a few optional/fun/orientation events on friday evening or the weekend, but your uncle is only turning 50 once, you can see your department people all year! They'll understand.

This is standard practice and your lease should state the monthly lease rate is $625/month and your lease should also state that you are paying both first and last month's rent. So that, combined with the receipt (proof of payment) is all the proof you need, in my opinion.

(This is what I think when I hear these terms--actual definitions vary by university / job descriptions / contracts!) In the context of a university job, I think that a "researcher" is someone who works on research mainly (or only) in a non-tenure track position. Often, these positions might be "term positions" (i.e. contract for X years) or basically dependent on their employer choosing to / being able to continue their employment (i.e. like almost any other job). A researcher may occasionally teach a course in their field of expertise. A researcher does not often serve on departmental committees and does not participate in decisions like hiring, curriculum changes, or grad student admission, etc. A "professor", to me, is a tenured or tenure track position with mixed teaching, research, and administrative duties. To me, they are the "manager" level positions--while they might carry out a bit of research, most of their time would be training/supervising students, postdocs or other "researchers". They might also be the instructor in charge of a large undergraduate class, with instructors (see below), more junior professors, or even graduate students teaching individual sections and reporting to them. I also think of "instructor" positions as similar to a "researcher" except the emphasis is on teaching classes rather than doing research. So, to me, I feel that instructors and researchers are the "front end" workers that do most of the instructing and research work in the department, and professors as having duties in between but are also management level workers. Graduate students are basically instructors/researchers in training, so we tend to do a lot of the "front end" instructing (TAships) and researching (RAships) work too! Therefore, I don't think it makes sense for me to answer "what would I rather be called", because to me, these are fundamentally different positions, not just different names for the same job!

In my opinion, if you have been asked by the interviewer to not share your interview questions and you agreed (whether it's a verbal or written agreement), then I think it would be unethical to share the questions. However, I have never encountered such a scenario and I don't think most places require you to not disclose your interview experience (at least not in my field). So, it should be fine to share interview experiences in most cases Also most academic interviews within a field are about the same anyways.

This is totally fine. Every single grad student I have met who went on an overseas trip will spend at least 3 days to 1 week after the work portion is over to be a tourist (on their own dime of course)! The only constraint is if you have to be back to TA a course or if you have another conference right after! Adding on one extra week to 4 months of work should be nothing. It's professional courtesy to check but honestly, most grad schools grant their students vacation time so I'd argue you are really just letting them know, not really getting approval/permission (but it's generally helpful to phrase it as the latter). Note: You should definitely check with the people who will eventually file your expense reports. Sometimes, you have to prove that your delayed flight home won't cost more than the original flight plan (or they will only reimburse the original cost). In addition, if you want to fly to more than one location on the way home, this is usually allowed too, except you generally need to print out or otherwise record the original roundtrip cost and that will be your maximum reimbursement for airfare. Rules vary between schools, so check with the admin staff! Most of my work travel is only 1 week long (for a conference) and I usually spend between 1 and 7 days after the fact to sightsee. For short trips (within North America), I probably only stay an extra day or two (i.e. the weekend following the conference). In 2011, I went to France for a conference and my (new) spouse flew out to Paris afterwards and we spent a week there and made it our honeymoon. Next month, I'm going to be in England for a conference and my spouse will meet me in London after the conference is over and we're spending 6 days there on vacation. All of the supervisors I've ever had have been very supportive of this and in fact, they all consider it a perk of being in academia. Personally, the ability to travel to interesting places for work is one of the big reasons I want to be in academia / grad school. My supervisors have always encouraged it and given us restaurant/travel/tourist recommendations etc. as well.

I spent no money on GRE prep. I used various websites with sample GRE questions and kept doing them until I felt ready for the types of questions I would get. For me, It took a while to get the hang of what they expect--especially the fill in the blank type questions. My favourite website to use was: http://www.majortests.com/gre/. This was more "orientation/prep" than studying, but it helped me understand how the test works. To study study, I just spent 2-3 hours per week memorizing word lists from the above website. With every list, they have a quiz so that was handy. I only got through 500 out of the thousands of words there but that was enough to do well in the GRE for me. My goal for the verbal was to score above the 75th percentile. From my prep above, I found that if you have limited time to study, just straight up memorizing a whole bunch of GRE words will give you the most return on your investment. In doing this, I ended up scoring above the 90th percentile, so I was very happy with my strategy. I definitely screwed up a bunch of questions in the reading comprehension section, where word memorization isn't as important, but oh well. Note: I took the "old" GRE where they had a lot of vocab questions without any context (e.g. synonym/antonym/analogies). I have heard that the new test does not have as much of this so perhaps memorization isn't as useful anymore. I didn't study math since my undergrad degree more than prepared me for the level of math in the GRE. I did complete a few practice question sets though, just to get used to what they will ask. I got the maximum score, so I was happy with my level of prep. Finally, in the week prior to the exam, I used the Powerprep stuff from ETS directly to simulate a test situation. I found this pretty helpful as well. I didn't prepare for the analytical writing at all, except for writing 2 practice essays the night before. I felt this was a mistake though but since I did not think the AW score mattered very much for my PhD programs, and that I knew my own writing ability is approx 4.5/6 and I would be happy with that score, I didn't spend my time on AW prep. In the end, I got the score I wanted, so I was happy! Although I spent no money on GRE prep, I did have to spend about $200-$300 in total for travel costs (and staying the night before) for the two GREs I wrote (General and Subject) because I didn't live in a city with a test center but the closest one was closer than the limit for creating a new one.

It's up to you what you want to do but I agree with everyone else that your opportunities are severely limited if you apply to schools that do not require the PGRE and will accept you for Spring. Not to mention the high cost of unfunded programs. Note that applying for 2015 Fall isn't really skipping a year and some people who intended to apply for Fall 2015 all along are already starting the applications now. You need to get these applications submitted around December 2014. You probably already know that the PGRE is only offered 3 times a year, so you have to write it during the two fall dates! This gives you about 2-3 months to study, which is probably an ideal time. I think this really is the best way forward if you know you want to get into a physics PhD program and are willing to spend the time and money for applications to do so. Ultimately, it's up to you, but I would think you are better off submitting well prepared Fall 2015 applications this December than to rush and submit incomplete (i.e. no PGRE score) applications to the tiny portion of schools that will accept both no-PGRE and a spring admission.

Yes, some programs do admit in the winter or spring term. Not very many though and it's more of an exception than a rule. The few people I know who started in Winter/Spring are those who were actually admitted for Fall but then had to defer for a semester for one reason or another. Physics programs tend to not be very large, even at big schools, and what I have experienced is that courses may be offered only once per year or every 2 (or 3) years, so missing a semester might put you way off the normal course progression. However, you should still continue to look for programs that admit in the Spring/Winter! To answer your other question--private colleges could be easier than public colleges for international students. At public colleges, international students pay the non-resident tuition for their entire degree. The department/supervisor usually grants a tuition waiver, but this can cost them around $30,000 to $50,000 per year. A domestic student's tuition may be in the $10,000 to $20,000 per year range. So, due to the extra cost of an international student, public schools sometimes are more picky when selecting international students. However, at most private schools, tuition for both Americans and international students are the same, so this isn't an issue. So, if you do not have American citizenship, you might find it easier to get into a private school than a public school, assuming both schools have roughly the same standards of admission. I applied to several schools in California of roughly the same ranking and got rejected from all the slightly lower ranked public ones but accepted at the higher ranked private one. In general though, I think most private schools tend to compete with the higher ranked public schools and these big programs usually only admit in the Fall. I should add that very few Physics schools will even admit you without a Physics GRE so when combined with Spring/Winter admits, your list could be really narrow. My advice is that you should still keep looking but study for and plan on taking the Physics GRE this fall (registration should start soon) and apply for Fall 2015 admit this winter as well, just in case (assuming that grad school is a high priority goal for you). Finally, I think a really useful resource is another forum site like this one, but specifically for Physics students: http://www.physicsgre.com/ You should take a look at the applicant profile threads (they go back many years): e.g. http://www.physicsgre.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5203 (last year's applicants). You can see the scores/GPAs that people have and what schools they applied to and their results. Keep in mind that the people that post their profiles are not a representative sample of graduate school applicants--students who are high achievers are the ones that tend to post their results, but you can still see approximately what kinds of scores get accepted/rejected from various schools.

For such an important presentation, can you find out if you can use more sophisticated teleconference technology? Many schools have special conference rooms for this, where there can be both video and audio transmission so that your remote committee member can just watch you and your slides on their screen (in their own school's teleconference room). This is the type of technology that schools generally use for important teleconferences or online classes. I remember there was one class I took where one student was a few hundred km away at another campus in their school's teleconference room and they were able to see the prof, the whiteboard, hear all of us talk/ask questions and we can hear them if they needed to ask a question too. Otherwise, for the case where the remote member will just be on the phone and viewing the presentation on their own screen, I would suggest: 1. They can't see you point, so highlight important information by drawing arrows or circles that appear when you tell them to go to the next slide. For example, if I wanted to draw attention to two different area of a graph, I might make the first slide be just the whole graph and I would talk about what is being displayed. Then, I would ask to move to the next slide, where arrows or circles will highlight one area and discuss that. Then move on until all the areas that you would normally highlight and point out with a laser or a stick is covered. So this means more slides than normal, probably. 2. Since you won't have animations anyways, I strongly encourage you to convert all your powerpoint slides to PDF and embed all fonts. Different versions of Powerpoint will display slides differently and your remote committee member might not be able to see what you intended to show. If you use any fonts that might not be installed on the other person's computer, they will not display correctly even on the PDF unless you embed the fonts upon PDF creation. Get used to presenting with PDFs instead of powerpoint slides--it's not really that different--just find the command that makes the PDF full screen (I think it's like CTRL+L with Adobe on a Windows machine) 3. If you are worried about audio quality making it difficult to hear you, you might want to add more text on your slides, although my main mode of presentation is to have minimal text. Maybe you can make a different file to send to the remote committee member that has more text. 4. Most defenses do not allow committee members to interrupt you and ask questions, but if this is allowed, be sure to give a bit of extra time for the remote committee member to ask questions. Maybe pause a bit longer between slides (or do this anyways even if they don't ask questions so that they can catch up). 5. Maybe number your slides so that if they get lost, the remote committee member can ask you what slide number they should be on! That's all I can think of now. Also, I think most people would realise that a presentation via teleconference is difficult so they would probably be more understanding/forgiving of any strange technical issues. Other than doing a few obvious things (like what you already suggested), I would not worry too much more and focus on delivering a strong presentation for the committee members that are there in person.

I can't help you with the exact question you have now, which sounds like you are interested in schools that will still accept students for a Fall 2014 start? I know that they exist but I don't know about them since most North American programs admitted students for Fall 2014 back in April 2014 or so. However, it's almost time for the Fall 2015 application season to open, would you consider also applying for Fall 2015 start? For Physics, deadlines tend to be around December 2014 for Fall 2015 starts. You can write the Physics GRE in Fall of this year. One additional thing is that most North American schools have 4 year undergraduate programs so having a 3 year BSc degree is something many schools may be worried about. To increase your chances, one way to mitigate this would be to spend the 2014-2015 year doing research if possible and scoring high on the Physics GRE. Or, if you can find a way to enter a Masters program first to show that you can handle the coursework but this might not be a good idea if you don't get into a funded program. Just some thoughts!

I think what you say and what academicat say are both valid points of view. You make a good argument why grad school (and the earning potential lost while in grad school) doesn't matter for you personally. Academicat makes a good point about why it does matter for them personally. I don't think Academicat is saying everyone needs to choose their values, but I feel that your posts do imply that "if someone from a poor family wants to go to school for the sake of going to school, they should be able to make the choices I made and be okay". But this will only work if they have the same values as you! On the other hand, someone from a well-off family would not have to make the same choices as you did in order to go to school for the sake of school. I don't think this is fair, and in my opinion, academia should seek to create a PhD positions that pay enough so that someone who needs a job that pays the bills would be able to. There is no sense in reserving academic positions only for those that 1) either don't need to worry about money because they have lots, or 2) don't worry about money because their lifestyle choices do not require money. I would not be comfortable living the way you do but I don't judge you for your choices and I hope you don't judge my need for comforts and possessions either. I am glad that you are able to find a way to make grad school work for you but just because it works for you, it doesn't mean that it is working for everyone. In my ideal world, academia would be accessible to everyone, no matter their socioeconomic background and also pay enough to compensate for their skills (and hey, if the graduate student happens to not worry about money, then that's great, they can save it for later or donate it to charity or science or whatever!).

I'm also not in your field, but I think some of this is common among most PhD programs, especially other science ones. No, the PhD process works differently in most places outside of the US. Here are the differences I know about relevant to your questions. I also seriously considered UK and European schools when I applied! 1. PhD programs in the UK are fully funded, like in the US. Same for the European schools. However, there is not as much money available to fund international students! Many UK schools I looked into basically said that they have limited funds to pay international students and they will only accept students they can fund (or have external funding) -- no self-funding! So, in my field and probably many other sciences, you will likely find a lot of funded programs, but the spots available will be much fewer and thus the competition will be higher. One UK school I looked at basically said that international applicants must win one of the university-wide graduate fellowships in order to be admitted since the department has no money for international students. Another issue is that a lot of external fellowships you might be able to apply for are only for UK or EU residents. So, you are only eligible for a small number of fellowships and thus the real criteria for acceptance is getting one of those competitive awards, which might be a higher threshold than being admitted to a school! However, this situation is basically the same for any student applying outside of their home country. International students applying to the US face the same issues, especially at public schools, where the international student tuition is much higher, so they cost more to the school, which means fewer international students get accepted. In addition, many international students in the US are very limited to what fellowships they can apply for as well. 2. Many UK and EU PhD programs are about 3 years long and research only. They often do require Masters degrees first because that's where you do your coursework. Most graduate students will do a Masters after their undergrad (or in some countries, a 5 year program that grants both degrees) before starting a PhD program. A Canadian, UK, or EU masters is similar to the first 1.5 to 2 years of a US PhD program while one of these PhD programs is similar to the last 3 years of a US PhD program. So, the overall work is about the same, just formatted differently. US programs tend to admit new PhD students by committee--i.e. an admissions committee often will meet and pick the best applicants to matriculate into their program, who then do coursework and lab rotations to eventually find their research group. In other places, grad students are "hired" directly by a professor who wants that particular student in their lab/group. A committee might exist to help sort through applications and filter out that don't meet minimum standards, but ultimately, it will be each professor's decision whether or not to admit a student. So, you might get an offer that specifically says you can work with specific profs. In some EU schools, PhD positions are considered jobs and you will find them published in job postings alongside postdoc positions. If you want a Masters first before applying to PhD positions, I recommend completing the entire track either in the UK or EU (where-ever you want to go to school), or in Canada, where the Masters program is funded since it's the first 2 years of a PhD basically. I don't think it's a good idea to do an unfunded US Masters and if possible, I think people should avoid doing half of their degree in the US system and the other half in the UK/EU system (although it will still work). 3. I got similar advice to hj2012 when I talked to professors about applying to programs outside of North America (my question was specific to future jobs in Canada though but it shouldn't be a huge difference). I think that for academic jobs anywhere, you will need exposure and "brand name recognition" when you are applying for academic jobs post-PhD. I have no idea what the criteria is for non-academic jobs (though I would guess it is less important). Many science PhD students will spend a large chunk of their final year going on a talk circuit to give seminars and colloquium talks at the schools they are applying to (and many schools will request their short listed applicants to come do this too). So, if you want e.g. a postdoc in the US, but are in the UK for school, this might put you at a disadvantage. It will be much harder for you to travel to the US to make these connections. Being across the world might mean that your "reputation" that you build in the UK might not be as well known in the US. But this is not impossibly hard of course. There are lots of things you can do if you want to both do a PhD in the UK and get a postdoc position in the US. I would recommend things like: a ) Definitely get membership in the American society for your field and attend annual meetings in the US where possible b ) Attending a top tier international student working with top researchers whose influence/reputation can cross continents is helpful c ) Work in groups or on projects that include collaborators with researchers at US schools! If you want to end up in the US/North America for work, I would give you the same advice as I would give to a Canadian thinking about US PhD programs (and advice I followed): Don't go to an international school that is of lower quality/ranking than the schools you can get into in the US. I would only apply to the top tier schools abroad and keep my "safety schools" to my home country. Finally, if you just want to have experience living abroad, which is a good thing for sure, perhaps it's better to do something else for a short time, like hj2012 suggested.

These reasons are why I am passionate about physics/astronomy, i.e. my field of work. It's the reason why I chose to do my undergraduate major in these topics! But I think, with an undergrad degree in Physics, I can do all of the additional learning I want about these fields without going to grad school. These reasons (wanting to learn in general and wanting to explore my interests in Physics/science) are big motivators that help keep me interested in my work as a graduate student but I didn't sign up for grad school solely to learn more. My main career goal is to be able to think about interesting problems, and scientific inquiry is definitely interesting to me, but that's not the only type of interesting problem available. This type of inquiry is at the very top of the Maslow hierarchy of needs, and I am much more interested in finding a career that allows me to feed my family before finding one that allows me to explore every wonder (I'll explore my wonder/curiosity in my free time though).