I have some questions about step 1 (find a flexible program):
My understanding is that there are two sources of inflexibility for PhD programs: A. Requirements for your funding source (e.g. TA-ing) and B. Vague requirements of the program (e.g. publish X papers). I’m excluding Quals, since you just have to pass a test and then you’re done.
Elsewhere in the comments, someone wrote:
“Grad school is free. At most good PhD programs in the US, if you get in then they will offer you funding which covers tuition and pays you a stipend on the order of $25K per year. In return, you may have to do some work as a TA or in a professor’s lab.”
So, there are two types of jobs you can have to fund your PhD (TA-ing and being a RA/Research Assistant to a professor).
How time-consuming is TA-ing generally? I imagine it varies based on the school/class. How do you find a TA-ing gig that isn’t time consuming? Can you generally TA during your entire PhD? I think I vaguely recall a university that only would let you TA for so many semesters.
You could also fund your PhD by getting a fellowship.
Philip Guo has written about applying for the NSF, NDSEG, Hertz fellowships. I’m poorly calibrated about how hard it is to get one of these fellowships. I’ve also heard that certain schools will offer fellowships to some of their students. How hard are these to get relative to the fellowships mentioned above? There are ~33K science PhDs awarded each year. I wonder what distinguishes the ~4% who get fellowships from the median science PhD student.
Let’s say that you were really frugal and/or financially independent already. My impression is that many schools would still require you to TA in order to have your tuition waved.
Let’s assume you have the financial aspect of your PhD taken care of (e.g. You have an easy/enjoyable TA job). What other requirements are there other than passing Quals? Could I read interesting books indefinitely until I find something interesting to publish?
How hard your quals are depends on how well you know your field. I went to a top 5 physics program, and everyone passed their qualifying exams, roughly half of whom opted to take the qual their first year of grad school. Obviously, we weren’t randomly selected though.
Fellowships are a crapshoot that depend on a lot of factors outside your control, but getting funding is generally pretty easy in the sciences. When you work as an “RA” you are basically just doing your thesis research. TAing can be time consuming, but literally no one cares if you do it poorly, so it’s not high pressure.
But this is a red flag:
Let’s assume you have the financial aspect of your PhD taken care of (e.g. You have an easy/enjoyable TA job). What other requirements are there other than passing Quals? Could I read interesting books indefinitely until I find something interesting to publish?
That isn’t how research works, at least in the sciences. Research is generally 1% “big idea” and 99% slowly grinding it out to see if it works. Your adviser, if he/she is any good, will help you find a big idea that you can make some progress on and you’ll be grinding it out every week and meeting with your adviser or other collaborators if you’ve gotten stuck.
That said, a bad adviser probably won’t pay any attention to you. So you can do whatever you want for about 7 years until people realize you’ve made no progress and the wheels come off the bus (at which point they’ll probably hand you a masters degree and send you on your way).
When I was in college, I almost never went to office hours or TA hours… except for one particular class, where the professor was a probably-brilliant guy who was completely incapable of giving a straight explanation or answer to anything. TA hours were packed full; most of the class went, and the TA explained all the stuff the teacher hadn’t.
That said, a bad adviser probably won’t pay any attention to you. So you can do whatever you want for about 7 years until people realize you’ve made no progress and the wheels come off the bus (at which point they’ll probably hand you a masters degree and send you on your way).
Do you incur debt if this happens, due to the cost of stipends and tuition waivers to the institution?
In the Ukrainian academy of sciences, if your institution doesn’t let you go in peace, you pay back your stipend; if you finished your PhD program without defending, you have to either work for 3 years in your department or in another governmental institution (doesn’t matter which, just not for a private business), or pay back the stipend. Not Fun:)
How much TAing is allowed or required depends on your field and department. I’m in a statistics department that expects PhD students to TA every semester (except their first and final year). It has taken me some effort to weasel out of around half of the teaching appointments, since I find teaching (especially grading) quite time-consuming, while industry internships both pay better and generate research experience. On the other hand, people I know from the CS department only have to teach 1-2 semesters during their entire PhD.
I have some questions about step 1 (find a flexible program):
My understanding is that there are two sources of inflexibility for PhD programs: A. Requirements for your funding source (e.g. TA-ing) and B. Vague requirements of the program (e.g. publish X papers). I’m excluding Quals, since you just have to pass a test and then you’re done.
Elsewhere in the comments, someone wrote:
So, there are two types of jobs you can have to fund your PhD (TA-ing and being a RA/Research Assistant to a professor). How time-consuming is TA-ing generally? I imagine it varies based on the school/class. How do you find a TA-ing gig that isn’t time consuming? Can you generally TA during your entire PhD? I think I vaguely recall a university that only would let you TA for so many semesters.
You could also fund your PhD by getting a fellowship. Philip Guo has written about applying for the NSF, NDSEG, Hertz fellowships. I’m poorly calibrated about how hard it is to get one of these fellowships. I’ve also heard that certain schools will offer fellowships to some of their students. How hard are these to get relative to the fellowships mentioned above? There are ~33K science PhDs awarded each year. I wonder what distinguishes the ~4% who get fellowships from the median science PhD student.
Let’s say that you were really frugal and/or financially independent already. My impression is that many schools would still require you to TA in order to have your tuition waved.
Let’s assume you have the financial aspect of your PhD taken care of (e.g. You have an easy/enjoyable TA job). What other requirements are there other than passing Quals? Could I read interesting books indefinitely until I find something interesting to publish?
I’d like to believe that achieving step 1 is possible, but as eli_sennesh pointed out, this is hard.
How hard your quals are depends on how well you know your field. I went to a top 5 physics program, and everyone passed their qualifying exams, roughly half of whom opted to take the qual their first year of grad school. Obviously, we weren’t randomly selected though.
Fellowships are a crapshoot that depend on a lot of factors outside your control, but getting funding is generally pretty easy in the sciences. When you work as an “RA” you are basically just doing your thesis research. TAing can be time consuming, but literally no one cares if you do it poorly, so it’s not high pressure.
But this is a red flag:
That isn’t how research works, at least in the sciences. Research is generally 1% “big idea” and 99% slowly grinding it out to see if it works. Your adviser, if he/she is any good, will help you find a big idea that you can make some progress on and you’ll be grinding it out every week and meeting with your adviser or other collaborators if you’ve gotten stuck.
That said, a bad adviser probably won’t pay any attention to you. So you can do whatever you want for about 7 years until people realize you’ve made no progress and the wheels come off the bus (at which point they’ll probably hand you a masters degree and send you on your way).
I have heard rumours that students are actually people, and that they care about the quality of the teaching they receive.
You’d think so, but office hours and TA sections without attendance grades are very sparsely attended.
Not in my class.
When I was in college, I almost never went to office hours or TA hours… except for one particular class, where the professor was a probably-brilliant guy who was completely incapable of giving a straight explanation or answer to anything. TA hours were packed full; most of the class went, and the TA explained all the stuff the teacher hadn’t.
Do you incur debt if this happens, due to the cost of stipends and tuition waivers to the institution?
In the Ukrainian academy of sciences, if your institution doesn’t let you go in peace, you pay back your stipend; if you finished your PhD program without defending, you have to either work for 3 years in your department or in another governmental institution (doesn’t matter which, just not for a private business), or pay back the stipend. Not Fun:)
How much TAing is allowed or required depends on your field and department. I’m in a statistics department that expects PhD students to TA every semester (except their first and final year). It has taken me some effort to weasel out of around half of the teaching appointments, since I find teaching (especially grading) quite time-consuming, while industry internships both pay better and generate research experience. On the other hand, people I know from the CS department only have to teach 1-2 semesters during their entire PhD.