Spot on! The majority of grad students I've met thought that getting the sheepskin will solve all their problems. You are from a top department so you will sure

Spot on! The majority of grad students I've met thought that getting the sheepskin will solve all their problems. You are from a top department so you will surely get a tenure-track position, and that will materialize into an associate professor job in no time. The first time I realized that things were not that rosy was when I started applying for faculty jobs and read the book "A PhD is not enough". One key reason for all this pain is very simple - too much competition. If we had large institutions like the old bell labs (being funded the same way), that would create demand for fresh PhDs and reduce some of the stress. Academia is also considered by almost everyone I know to be a one way gate. If you get out, you can't come back in (unless you have achieved massive success and popularity on the outside). This is a sad state of affairs. All this said, I think there are some very good results of getting a PhD. My social circle is full of ridiculously smart people. I think I'm trained to be unsatisfied until I better understand things, and I have more critical thinking today than when I started grad school.