8 ms·

Getting a Computer Science PhD in the USA

90 points by azhenley 5y ago

systemvoltage 5y ago
> There’s the extremely-competitive tier (places like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, and perhaps some others) One of these is unlike the other.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  What do you mean? Some of us are uninformed.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Yeah, not clear what GP is referring to. The 4 schools mentioned have joint 1st place at the US News ranking for CS, and are in the top 5 of CS Master programs at TFE. Two are initialisms, two aren’t, two are in California, two aren’t. Three are private, while one is public, but what does it matter? https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch... https://tfetimes.com/best-computer-science-program-rankings/ https://tfetimes.com/best-computer-science-program-rankings/
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      CMU isn’t as well known as the others. The OP may have thought it stood for Central Michigan University. Nope, it stands for Carnegie Mellon University, #1 in computer science and also #1 in Pittsburgh vibes :)
      - bambataa 5y ago
        I (as a European) thought CMU was well-known in the US for being one of the top CS schools?
        dijit 5y ago
        Same. CMU comes up a lot when talking about the BSDs (yes, I’m aware that BSD stands for Berkeley Standard Distribution. But cmu still comes up a lot)
        jks 5y ago
        I (as another European) associate it with the excellent CMU Common Lisp.
        ModernMech 5y ago
        As a CMU grad, I can report literally no one I've ever met outside of academia has heard of CMU, despite it being mentioned in passing in several blockbuster hits including: The Core, and The Happening. Fun fact, the bookstore wasn't allowed to make shirts that said CMU for some time because Central Michigan University had a problem with that. Eventually they came to an arrangement and now you can buy CMU shirts at Carnegie Mellon.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  ^^^ Found the Stanford student! ^^^ Pthththth. Go Bears!!! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfebpLfAt8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfebpLfAt8g https://www.dailycal.org/2019/11/22/a-deep-dive-into-uc-berkeley-stanford-rivalry/ https://www.dailycal.org/2019/11/22/a-deep-dive-into-uc-berk... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24351695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24351695 "4.2 > V" BSD -vs- System V, X-Wing / Death Star Poster https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ashaferian/Drive/master/Mt.Xinu%20BSD%20Poster.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ashaferian/Drive/master/Mt... https://www.ericconrad.com/2008/12/ https://www.ericconrad.com/2008/12/
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    >> "4.2 > V" BSD -vs- System V, X-Wing / Death Star Poster Funny poster, but that is not even an X-Wing. It looks more like a mashup of a BSG Viper with two WH40k Tau Burst Cannons strapped on (the older version, with the naked barrels). One would hope that PhD students at the top-rated US universities would be able to tell the difference.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
I think the most important thing to know about PhDs is that you get paid to get them. Personally, I didn’t understand how people could afford to stay in school so long. I regularly tell Uber drivers this just to spread the PhD ambition.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Exactly. A lot of people unfamiliar with graduate school assume that it is like professional schools (law & medicine) where you actually have to pay (sometimes more than 100K all told for a degree over several years). Graduate stipends may be stingy, but at least you don't end up in debt from it.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    > sometimes more than 100K all told for a degree over several years Is it even possible to get a medical or law degree for less than 100k these days without rare scholarships and grants? Even a shorter 12 quarter program still runs around $11k a quarter. And even then the school can’t be bothered to pay for basic supplies and equipment you’re required to get, nor for the thousand-dollar licensing exams. And they still expect to get paid for that one quarter you go offsite to do unpaid work for some other provider to get real-world experience. What a racket. (It’s probably obviously I’m peeved about a specific case :p)
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Medicine I can kinda understand at least part of it. But law? That should be pretty cheap to provide. It doesn't change overly much and it is just books. You could probably video entire lecture series and just replay them... It is not like they need some sort of lab work with expensive equipment.
      - HarryHirsch 5y ago
        In 2005, before the Great Recession there were plans at many universities to institute law schools, as you say the costs are low, you need a library and a bunch of lecturers, and you would have a profit center for the institution. Trouble is, there has been an oversupply of lawyers. Salary distribution is bimodal, biglaw pays entirely different than smalltown law, and with a degree from a random backwater it's guaranteed that you'll never make it into biglaw. Those plans would have been an invitation for students to get into debt that they'd never be able to repay. (We are seeing a re-run, this time with pharmacy schools.) Medicine is a cost center for universities, so medical degrees are expensive. But in a functioning society you need physicians, and no medical graduate with a choice will settle in rural Mississippi. What I'm saying here is that education as a market is not a good model to have.
tsumnia 5y ago
"You can expect to make about USD 30,000 (before taxes) for the academic year." Well that's a lie. NC State is $20k for a CS PhD Student, oh, and that's before you pay the $4k a year on student fees. The article glosses over it, but you're paid dirt. And what sucks more, is you're paid good dirt, so all the other PhD departments look at your with their barely 10k stipends and think you're ungrateful for your poverty line wage.
- eastendguy 5y ago
  In Europe you get paid more, especially in Switzerland. And in general, English is sufficient for getting a CS PhD in Europe. Two examples of many: - https://imprs.is.mpg.de/ https://imprs.is.mpg.de/ - https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-research/welcome-center/employment-contract-and-salary/salary.html https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-resea...
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    I was once told that ETH Zurich renders instruction in German and requires it for certain courses. Is that still the case?
    - smithsonian112 5y ago
      For PhD and masters level, everything is in English except maybe some specific civil engineering courses about regulations. Also, I believe that for CS, everything is in English starting from Bachelors, with lectures in English and small problem classes being held either in German or English (you can choose).
    - Shacklz 5y ago
      Back when I was there, the first year of BSc was fully in German (apparently mandated by law), afterwards, there was the occasional lecture in German but usually with slides/exercises/exams available in English as well as English-speaking tutors. There are also students from the French/Italian part of Switzerland, so there's a natural convergence towards English rather quick, at least that was my experience. (take this with a grain of salt, it's been a while and my information might be outdated)
graycat 5y ago
That's an elaborate analysis of the considerations of getting a US Ph.D. Gee, I got a Ph.D. in applied math; it could have been called computer science. But I never went through even 10% of that analysis. I didn't get accepted to Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, or MIT, but I didn't apply to any of them. But I did get accepted to Indiana University, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, and Johns Hopkins and went to one of those. Why did I get accepted? In my application I showed that I had (a) a good ugrad pure math education, (b) a good career in applied math and computing with some good work results (samples), and (c) a lot of learning of applied math and computing since my ugrad education. While I was a grad student, I regarded the courses as only vague suggestions. If I found the courses not well done or not much relevant to my interests, then I felt free just to ignore the courses. In the end, I had four courses that were good, one of which I already knew maybe 80% of the material (it totally pissed off the prof that I already knew so much of the material and effortlessly and unintentionally led the class on all the grading by wide margins). The other three courses were good and I learned some good stuff well. Next were the Ph.D. qualifying exams: There were five exams, and I led the class on four of them. For three of the four, I led because of what I knew before I entered the program. Next, what really got me on track, waxed the bottoms of my skis, to get my Ph.D. was that in one of the good courses I saw a problem, saw no solution in the literature, and in two weeks found a solid solution. Later I published the work. Any of the faculty members would have been proud to have published that work. For the dissertation itself, I identified the problem and found an intuitive solution before entering grad school. Next, independently in my first summer, I converted the intuitive solution to solid math. Later in a few weeks I wrote and ran software that did well illustrating that my solution worked, was practical. So, summary lesson: (i) Arrive well prepared, from ugrad school, work experience, independent study, whatever. (ii) As soon as possible, hopefully before entering grad school, independently get a research problem and make good progress on it. (iii) While in grad school, likely largely independently, hopefully find some little problem, find a solution, and publish that. (iv) Likely independently, finish the dissertation project, submit the written document, and stand for an oral exam. (v) Do expect never to pay any tuition, but don't expect any pay. Instead, have some money, a car, clothes, etc. from, say, savings from work before grad school. (vi) Don't expect much from the department -- don't expect good research projects, good hints for project solutions, etc. Instead, just work and produce good results almost completely independently. One more piece of advice: For a Ph.D. in any of the STEM fields, start with a good background in pure and applied math, say, foundations, abstract algebra, linear algebra, and analysis. In particular, learn how to write math. Then outside of pure math departments, will likely be the local star in abilities in math. Then for research, mathematize some part of the STEM field.
tzs 5y ago
This may be in there and I just missed it, but I'll add if you are still an undergraduate (or high school student) and think you might later want a PhD, take a look at a few PhD programs and see if they have any non-obvious requirements that you had best take care of before you start their PhD program. For example, when I was a high school student applying to Caltech's undergraduate program I took a look at the graduate school section of the catalog just to see what their math and physics PhD requirements were. They had a language requirement for a math PhD. To get a PhD you had to either be fluent in one of French, German, or Russian, or you had to have a sufficient reading ability in two of those to read the current and historical math literature in those languages. That kind of thing is much better to take care of in high school or as an undergraduate.
- tubby12345 5y ago
  >They had a language requirement for a math PhD. To get a PhD you had to either be fluent in one of French, German, or Russian, or you had to have a sufficient reading ability in two of those to read the current and historical math literature in those languages. This a thing of the past, from a time when people in the USSR still published things of note in Russian (the same for the other countries/languages your mentioned). Today everyone publishes in English and I don't of a single math department that still has that as a requirement. I also don't know of any other such extracurricular requirements for any program (can't even imagine what it would be - community service???)
  - hervature 5y ago
    Harvard still does it: https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/guide-to-graduate-study/ https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/guide-to-graduate-stud... Go to language exam.
    - tubby12345 5y ago
      Hmm must be the last (leave it to Harvard to persist in the persist in the pretence I guess) but fwiw this is the entirety of the task: >Students may request to substitute the Italian language exam if it is relevant to their area of mathematics Which is far far short of "learn a language". But these requirements were always like this (a pretentious formality completely insignificant in comparison to the actual research and course work).
mikebonnell 5y ago
There are a couple of typos/incomplete sentences if you want to correct them. In section 1, “ Still, my opinion is heavily by my own environments, experiences, and beliefs.” I assume this should be heavily influenced by my own… In 3.3, you mention “ The value of a standardized test is that it give sus some calibration.” Which appears to have a misplaced “s” after give. Lastly, thank you for writing such a detailed post!
- skrishnamurthi 5y ago
  Thank you for these. I didn't think anyone would read it, but since I've been proven wrong, I actually ran a spell-checker. (-: Wouldn't have (and didn't) catch the first typo, though!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cumshitpiss 5y ago
I moved to the EU from the US. It's a much better deal. It's treated as employment. I get a salary that's above the median for the city (50k Euro), health insurance, 5 weeks paid vacation and I can bike everywhere :) I used to make more than double in the states, but I'm just happier here. If you're considering a PhD, consider doing it in EU
sheepdog 5y ago
Interesting that he mentioned the $300,000 model... Hypothetical question for US-based folks: I wonder if there is a non-traditional path for people who can afford to research without the need for a stipend? Technologists tend to be in the upper income brackets. For a lucky few, it's possible to achieve financial independence in their 40's. At that point conducting research may seem like an attractive intellectual pastime. These hypothetical PhD students can sustain themselves for 4-6 years without a salary. I suppose there would still be some grant-seeking, depending on the scale of the research. Technically they could actually pay the university, becoming a funding source instead of a burden... If someone had $2-$3 million in their retirement accounts, it seems strange to scratch and claw for $300k of research stipend funding. Has anyone heard of such an arrangement? Is this a thing?
- ModernMech 5y ago
  If you are financially independently wealthy, then you can just apply to the school and pay the full-rate tuition. Usually the way admission works is that you indicate a faculty advisor with whom you want to work. They will act as your mentor. I don't know of a situation where you would work alone, nor would you want to if you wanted to get the most out of your time there. So you would want to talk to that actual person you want to work with, and have a conversation about the fact that you can fund your own research. I imagine the funding process would have to go through the University. They get a cut of research funding, so they would want to funnel your funds through the same system set up for private grants, of which there are plenty. So yeah, I don't see why you couldn't do this. You would just set up a private research grant with a faculty member and fund yourself with it.
sharmin123 5y ago
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90 points by azhenley 5y ago

> There’s the extremely-competitive tier (places like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, and perhaps some others) One of these is unlike the other.

mdp2021 5y ago
What do you mean? Some of us are uninformed.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Yeah, not clear what GP is referring to. The 4 schools mentioned have joint 1st place at the US News ranking for CS, and are in the top 5 of CS Master programs at TFE. Two are initialisms, two aren’t, two are in California, two aren’t. Three are private, while one is public, but what does it matter? https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch... https://tfetimes.com/best-computer-science-program-rankings/ https://tfetimes.com/best-computer-science-program-rankings/
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    CMU isn’t as well known as the others. The OP may have thought it stood for Central Michigan University. Nope, it stands for Carnegie Mellon University, #1 in computer science and also #1 in Pittsburgh vibes :)
    - bambataa 5y ago
      I (as a European) thought CMU was well-known in the US for being one of the top CS schools?
      - dijit 5y ago
        Same. CMU comes up a lot when talking about the BSDs (yes, I’m aware that BSD stands for Berkeley Standard Distribution. But cmu still comes up a lot)
        jks 5y ago
        I (as another European) associate it with the excellent CMU Common Lisp.
      - ModernMech 5y ago
        As a CMU grad, I can report literally no one I've ever met outside of academia has heard of CMU, despite it being mentioned in passing in several blockbuster hits including: The Core, and The Happening. Fun fact, the bookstore wasn't allowed to make shirts that said CMU for some time because Central Michigan University had a problem with that. Eventually they came to an arrangement and now you can buy CMU shirts at Carnegie Mellon.
DonHopkins 5y ago
^^^ Found the Stanford student! ^^^ Pthththth. Go Bears!!! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfebpLfAt8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfebpLfAt8g https://www.dailycal.org/2019/11/22/a-deep-dive-into-uc-berkeley-stanford-rivalry/ https://www.dailycal.org/2019/11/22/a-deep-dive-into-uc-berk... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24351695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24351695 "4.2 > V" BSD -vs- System V, X-Wing / Death Star Poster https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ashaferian/Drive/master/Mt.Xinu%20BSD%20Poster.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ashaferian/Drive/master/Mt... https://www.ericconrad.com/2008/12/ https://www.ericconrad.com/2008/12/
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  >> "4.2 > V" BSD -vs- System V, X-Wing / Death Star Poster Funny poster, but that is not even an X-Wing. It looks more like a mashup of a BSG Viper with two WH40k Tau Burst Cannons strapped on (the older version, with the naked barrels). One would hope that PhD students at the top-rated US universities would be able to tell the difference.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

I think the most important thing to know about PhDs is that you get paid to get them. Personally, I didn’t understand how people could afford to stay in school so long. I regularly tell Uber drivers this just to spread the PhD ambition.

jhbadger 5y ago
Exactly. A lot of people unfamiliar with graduate school assume that it is like professional schools (law & medicine) where you actually have to pay (sometimes more than 100K all told for a degree over several years). Graduate stipends may be stingy, but at least you don't end up in debt from it.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  > sometimes more than 100K all told for a degree over several years Is it even possible to get a medical or law degree for less than 100k these days without rare scholarships and grants? Even a shorter 12 quarter program still runs around $11k a quarter. And even then the school can’t be bothered to pay for basic supplies and equipment you’re required to get, nor for the thousand-dollar licensing exams. And they still expect to get paid for that one quarter you go offsite to do unpaid work for some other provider to get real-world experience. What a racket. (It’s probably obviously I’m peeved about a specific case :p)
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Medicine I can kinda understand at least part of it. But law? That should be pretty cheap to provide. It doesn't change overly much and it is just books. You could probably video entire lecture series and just replay them... It is not like they need some sort of lab work with expensive equipment.
    - HarryHirsch 5y ago
      In 2005, before the Great Recession there were plans at many universities to institute law schools, as you say the costs are low, you need a library and a bunch of lecturers, and you would have a profit center for the institution. Trouble is, there has been an oversupply of lawyers. Salary distribution is bimodal, biglaw pays entirely different than smalltown law, and with a degree from a random backwater it's guaranteed that you'll never make it into biglaw. Those plans would have been an invitation for students to get into debt that they'd never be able to repay. (We are seeing a re-run, this time with pharmacy schools.) Medicine is a cost center for universities, so medical degrees are expensive. But in a functioning society you need physicians, and no medical graduate with a choice will settle in rural Mississippi. What I'm saying here is that education as a market is not a good model to have.

tsumnia 5y ago

"You can expect to make about USD 30,000 (before taxes) for the academic year." Well that's a lie. NC State is $20k for a CS PhD Student, oh, and that's before you pay the $4k a year on student fees. The article glosses over it, but you're paid dirt. And what sucks more, is you're paid good dirt, so all the other PhD departments look at your with their barely 10k stipends and think you're ungrateful for your poverty line wage.

eastendguy 5y ago
In Europe you get paid more, especially in Switzerland. And in general, English is sufficient for getting a CS PhD in Europe. Two examples of many: - https://imprs.is.mpg.de/ https://imprs.is.mpg.de/ - https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-research/welcome-center/employment-contract-and-salary/salary.html https://ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-resea...
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  I was once told that ETH Zurich renders instruction in German and requires it for certain courses. Is that still the case?
  - smithsonian112 5y ago
    For PhD and masters level, everything is in English except maybe some specific civil engineering courses about regulations. Also, I believe that for CS, everything is in English starting from Bachelors, with lectures in English and small problem classes being held either in German or English (you can choose).
  - Shacklz 5y ago
    Back when I was there, the first year of BSc was fully in German (apparently mandated by law), afterwards, there was the occasional lecture in German but usually with slides/exercises/exams available in English as well as English-speaking tutors. There are also students from the French/Italian part of Switzerland, so there's a natural convergence towards English rather quick, at least that was my experience. (take this with a grain of salt, it's been a while and my information might be outdated)

graycat 5y ago

That's an elaborate analysis of the considerations of getting a US Ph.D. Gee, I got a Ph.D. in applied math; it could have been called computer science. But I never went through even 10% of that analysis. I didn't get accepted to Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, or MIT, but I didn't apply to any of them. But I did get accepted to Indiana University, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, and Johns Hopkins and went to one of those. Why did I get accepted? In my application I showed that I had (a) a good ugrad pure math education, (b) a good career in applied math and computing with some good work results (samples), and (c) a lot of learning of applied math and computing since my ugrad education. While I was a grad student, I regarded the courses as only vague suggestions. If I found the courses not well done or not much relevant to my interests, then I felt free just to ignore the courses. In the end, I had four courses that were good, one of which I already knew maybe 80% of the material (it totally pissed off the prof that I already knew so much of the material and effortlessly and unintentionally led the class on all the grading by wide margins). The other three courses were good and I learned some good stuff well. Next were the Ph.D. qualifying exams: There were five exams, and I led the class on four of them. For three of the four, I led because of what I knew before I entered the program. Next, what really got me on track, waxed the bottoms of my skis, to get my Ph.D. was that in one of the good courses I saw a problem, saw no solution in the literature, and in two weeks found a solid solution. Later I published the work. Any of the faculty members would have been proud to have published that work. For the dissertation itself, I identified the problem and found an intuitive solution before entering grad school. Next, independently in my first summer, I converted the intuitive solution to solid math. Later in a few weeks I wrote and ran software that did well illustrating that my solution worked, was practical. So, summary lesson: (i) Arrive well prepared, from ugrad school, work experience, independent study, whatever. (ii) As soon as possible, hopefully before entering grad school, independently get a research problem and make good progress on it. (iii) While in grad school, likely largely independently, hopefully find some little problem, find a solution, and publish that. (iv) Likely independently, finish the dissertation project, submit the written document, and stand for an oral exam. (v) Do expect never to pay any tuition, but don't expect any pay. Instead, have some money, a car, clothes, etc. from, say, savings from work before grad school. (vi) Don't expect much from the department -- don't expect good research projects, good hints for project solutions, etc. Instead, just work and produce good results almost completely independently. One more piece of advice: For a Ph.D. in any of the STEM fields, start with a good background in pure and applied math, say, foundations, abstract algebra, linear algebra, and analysis. In particular, learn how to write math. Then outside of pure math departments, will likely be the local star in abilities in math. Then for research, mathematize some part of the STEM field.

tzs 5y ago

This may be in there and I just missed it, but I'll add if you are still an undergraduate (or high school student) and think you might later want a PhD, take a look at a few PhD programs and see if they have any non-obvious requirements that you had best take care of before you start their PhD program. For example, when I was a high school student applying to Caltech's undergraduate program I took a look at the graduate school section of the catalog just to see what their math and physics PhD requirements were. They had a language requirement for a math PhD. To get a PhD you had to either be fluent in one of French, German, or Russian, or you had to have a sufficient reading ability in two of those to read the current and historical math literature in those languages. That kind of thing is much better to take care of in high school or as an undergraduate.

tubby12345 5y ago
>They had a language requirement for a math PhD. To get a PhD you had to either be fluent in one of French, German, or Russian, or you had to have a sufficient reading ability in two of those to read the current and historical math literature in those languages. This a thing of the past, from a time when people in the USSR still published things of note in Russian (the same for the other countries/languages your mentioned). Today everyone publishes in English and I don't of a single math department that still has that as a requirement. I also don't know of any other such extracurricular requirements for any program (can't even imagine what it would be - community service???)
- hervature 5y ago
  Harvard still does it: https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/guide-to-graduate-study/ https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/guide-to-graduate-stud... Go to language exam.
  - tubby12345 5y ago
    Hmm must be the last (leave it to Harvard to persist in the persist in the pretence I guess) but fwiw this is the entirety of the task: >Students may request to substitute the Italian language exam if it is relevant to their area of mathematics Which is far far short of "learn a language". But these requirements were always like this (a pretentious formality completely insignificant in comparison to the actual research and course work).

mikebonnell 5y ago

There are a couple of typos/incomplete sentences if you want to correct them. In section 1, “ Still, my opinion is heavily by my own environments, experiences, and beliefs.” I assume this should be heavily influenced by my own… In 3.3, you mention “ The value of a standardized test is that it give sus some calibration.” Which appears to have a misplaced “s” after give. Lastly, thank you for writing such a detailed post!

skrishnamurthi 5y ago
Thank you for these. I didn't think anyone would read it, but since I've been proven wrong, I actually ran a spell-checker. (-: Wouldn't have (and didn't) catch the first typo, though!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cumshitpiss 5y ago

I moved to the EU from the US. It's a much better deal. It's treated as employment. I get a salary that's above the median for the city (50k Euro), health insurance, 5 weeks paid vacation and I can bike everywhere :) I used to make more than double in the states, but I'm just happier here. If you're considering a PhD, consider doing it in EU

sheepdog 5y ago

Interesting that he mentioned the $300,000 model... Hypothetical question for US-based folks: I wonder if there is a non-traditional path for people who can afford to research without the need for a stipend? Technologists tend to be in the upper income brackets. For a lucky few, it's possible to achieve financial independence in their 40's. At that point conducting research may seem like an attractive intellectual pastime. These hypothetical PhD students can sustain themselves for 4-6 years without a salary. I suppose there would still be some grant-seeking, depending on the scale of the research. Technically they could actually pay the university, becoming a funding source instead of a burden... If someone had $2-$3 million in their retirement accounts, it seems strange to scratch and claw for $300k of research stipend funding. Has anyone heard of such an arrangement? Is this a thing?

ModernMech 5y ago
If you are financially independently wealthy, then you can just apply to the school and pay the full-rate tuition. Usually the way admission works is that you indicate a faculty advisor with whom you want to work. They will act as your mentor. I don't know of a situation where you would work alone, nor would you want to if you wanted to get the most out of your time there. So you would want to talk to that actual person you want to work with, and have a conversation about the fact that you can fund your own research. I imagine the funding process would have to go through the University. They get a cut of research funding, so they would want to funnel your funds through the same system set up for private grants, of which there are plenty. So yeah, I don't see why you couldn't do this. You would just set up a private research grant with a faculty member and fund yourself with it.

sharmin123 5y ago

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