Absolutely. It’s a function of grant money. MIT has more grant money than anyplace else on Earth, so it’s easy to start grad students on research projects. At the U. of Buffalo, there were only 2 professors in my department who had grants, so getting onto someone’s project was hard, and anyway you were taking 4 classes a semester and TAing at least one for the first 2 years, while studying for the qualifiers. I don’t know anything about this “free time” OP talks about.
Few students did research before their third year, after passing their qualifiers at the end of the second. A prof wouldn’t really be interested in a student who hadn’t passed the qualifiers. That’s why the average CS PhD there took 8 years of grad school.
You could do your own research, of course. I did that, but I eventually had to throw it all out, because I couldn’t get anyone interested enough in it to be my advisor.
Absolutely. It’s a function of grant money. MIT has more grant money than anyplace else on Earth, so it’s easy to start grad students on research projects. At the U. of Buffalo, there were only 2 professors in my department who had grants, so getting onto someone’s project was hard, and anyway you were taking 4 classes a semester and TAing at least one for the first 2 years, while studying for the qualifiers. I don’t know anything about this “free time” OP talks about.
Few students did research before their third year, after passing their qualifiers at the end of the second. A prof wouldn’t really be interested in a student who hadn’t passed the qualifiers. That’s why the average CS PhD there took 8 years of grad school.
You could do your own research, of course. I did that, but I eventually had to throw it all out, because I couldn’t get anyone interested enough in it to be my advisor.