Jump to content

academic milestones


harryq
 Share

Recommended Posts

i'm in a chemistry phd program and i've got my 2nd year oral exam wednesday. pretty much "prelims". me, five profs, and a white board for 2+ hours. suck.

and grad school is super cheap if you're in a good program. i've only had to pay about $800 a semester (student fees)--tuition is waived and i get a stipend for teaching. i get about $21K a year before taxes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i would love to go to grad school, but i just can't justify the cost right now. i don't know how people deal with all the debt. my best friend's girlfriend is in vet school right now and will have $200k in debt when she graduates in the spring. considering my ex had $50k in debt and had to pay $500 a month, she'll be paying $2000 a month. average starting salary is only around $60k for a vet, which means over half of every paycheck would be going towards loans. oof.

when I was first looking in to grad school, I was told something along the lines of "if you have to pay for it, don't go". this advice may have just applied to grad school for biostatistics (between research and teaching assistantships, I think 90% of the students in our program get tuition and insurance covered + a stipend), but I can't imagine graduating having racked up 4-5 years of $20,000/year tuition debt.

yeah, my best friend (the girl in vet school's boyfriend) is getting paid to get his phd at harvard in mechanical engineering. they told him when he applied that he would have to pay to just get his masters, but if he got his phd and did research for them, he'd get a stipend of $20some thousand a year instead. his department got some huge grant from the department of defense to create killer flying robots, so that's what he's been working on for the past 4 or 5 years. it actually made one of the conservative talk show host's list of worst government spending once. he was pretty proud of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in 2 hours, I'm taking my qualifying exam (the first big hurdle on my way to getting a phd in biostatistics)--anyone else having any big academic milestones coming up (or happen recently)?

qualifying exams suck... I'm further along with my dissertation than my classmates (in that I've started my dissertation), so that will hopefully be worth some bonus points (the grading of the exam is objective/blinded, but the pass/fail decision accounts for other things)

I don't think any of you care, but since no one from my class is on here (and thus there are no feelings to hurt): I PASSED! whoo! now I need to buy some records and maybe get a tattoo...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in 2 hours, I'm taking my qualifying exam (the first big hurdle on my way to getting a phd in biostatistics)--anyone else having any big academic milestones coming up (or happen recently)?

qualifying exams suck... I'm further along with my dissertation than my classmates (in that I've started my dissertation), so that will hopefully be worth some bonus points (the grading of the exam is objective/blinded, but the pass/fail decision accounts for other things)

I don't think any of you care, but since no one from my class is on here (and thus there are no feelings to hurt): I PASSED! whoo! now I need to buy some records and maybe get a tattoo...

congrats man....shit's crucial

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in 2 hours, I'm taking my qualifying exam (the first big hurdle on my way to getting a phd in biostatistics)--anyone else having any big academic milestones coming up (or happen recently)?

qualifying exams suck... I'm further along with my dissertation than my classmates (in that I've started my dissertation), so that will hopefully be worth some bonus points (the grading of the exam is objective/blinded, but the pass/fail decision accounts for other things)

I don't think any of you care, but since no one from my class is on here (and thus there are no feelings to hurt): I PASSED! whoo! now I need to buy some records and maybe get a tattoo...

Congrats man, that's awesome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest markovianprocess

I don't think any of you care, but since no one from my class is on here (and thus there are no feelings to hurt): I PASSED! whoo! now I need to buy some records and maybe get a tattoo...

Congrats man, that's awesome!

Well done. It's always a good feeling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest markovianprocess
I came out of Undergrad at Syracuse University debt free because I'm awesome, but 3 years limping through grad school cost me ~$30,000 at University at Buffalo. Sucks, but at least it's not $190,000 like it could be for the 7 years of school I went.

Man, that's insane. I've got £6,000 of debt for 5 years of university, and that's just a student loan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yea, but your country seems to care about educating your youth rather than creating ignorant sheep who are stuck in debt and therefore are grateful for shit work and shit hours for shit pay because they can't risk being unemployed.

AMERICA, FUCK YA!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×

AdBlock Detected

spacer.png

We noticed that you're using an adBlocker

Yes, I'll whitelist