Academia Definition and 114 Threads

Hello everyone, I'm currently on my last year as an undergraduate, and I've been thinking a lot about going into graduate school lately. I have some big doubts regarding the big question of weather I should or should not enter grad school and try to pursuit an academic career. 1. First off...

This semester my university has a lot of PhD students that are to afraid to graduate or can't be supported by their professors due to a lack of funding. So because of this there are a lot of PhD students forced to teach this semester. Of course this means that there is a huge flood of TAs this...

I'm currently a third year physics undergraduate student at the University of Toronto --which is respectable as far as Canadian schools go. My marks are decent: 3.83 GPA of almost exclusively physics and math courses. I have recently been looking carefully at the realities of working towards a...

An undergrad here, about to finish up within a couple of months. My grades aren't too good overall and I think I've learned that the academic life is not for me. Well, to be more precise, the stress and pressure associated with academic life is not for me. I am thinking about the possibility of...

Hello, I come from Belgium where I did my Master in Physics. However, in this country, with this diploma you can only teach in schools (ages 15-18)... PhD positions are relativelly few and far between. As I did not wanted to teach young poeple, I searched for a PhD outside my country and I...

I find myself very interested in Cosmology and would consider doing a PhD in the field, however I am not sure if I would like to be an academic or not. Given the relatively few technical applications of Cosmology, would it be wiser for me to enter a field with greater possibilities for...

Does anybody know of a study which looks at divorce rates for people with academic jobs? I looked around briefly and only found an old article in which the author notes that she couldn't find any statistics on the subject. http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1999/03/24feature.html I was...

Which environment do physicists preferred to work in the most? Some of my professors say even though the pay is great compared to having the alternative option of working in academia, many physicists , like my professor , still prefers to work in academia, even though she is making 6x less...

Hey everyone, I've been wondering about where Physics Ph.D. graduates work a few years after they've graduated and are looking for permanent positions. I looked at most universities' faculty lists and it seems like they all went to top 20 (actually mostly top 10) schools! This includes...

Recently, I've constantly been debating going into Academia, versus industry. First off, I absolutely love conducting research, and can't see myself not doing research. I know you can do research in industry...but it doesn't seem like it's the same. I want to have the freedom to spontaneously...

Hi all, I am just wondering how much of a job market there is for econophysicists in academia, as compared to say theoretical condensed matter physicists. Is it easier to get a job? How much so? Also, what are some good schools for econophysics research?

Ah, I'm considering getting a PHD in EE, probably in control systems. A tough decision to make; I have the next 4 months to decide. :) Now that I'm in my final stages of my master's , it's not so bad: I'm finishing implementing an idea. Although I'm still reading a few papers, it's mostly...

Hello, I am wondering if anybody has any advice on which direction is better for somebody who hopes to work as a tenured university professor. I am a PhD candidate in Material Science. My work is 70% experimental (ion implantation, SEM,Auger, and XPS) and 30% computational (ab-initio, and MD...

So I was looking through salary.com statistics and various news articles such as this one http://content.salary.monster.com/articles/salary/highestpay/ and found that physicist salaries far surpass my expectations, since many people claim that physicists, and scientist in general, do not make...