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Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

brown.edu

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Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#171

Post by barrkel »

azhenley wrote: post #5
tombert wrote: post #3

This is really cool. I'm 30 right now, and only just recently finished my bachelors and have been looking to get a PhD, but it's really hard to find a program that will let you work full time while doing it. It doesn't help that a part of me does sort of feel "too old" to do this sometimes. The PhD system in the US is really tailored around the assumption that you haven't entered the corporate world yet. Anyway, it's…

Professor here. You definitely aren’t too old, but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere. A PhD is a full-time job. It took me 6.5 years and was hard enough with very little outside distractions.

This is a similar attitude that you sometimes still see in employers with pregnant employees.

Your total justification seems to be that because it was hard for you, it will be hard for others too.

Fwiw my partner got her PhD part-time while working for the university as a researcher and consultant, actively authoring and publishing papers. It took her many years, but mostly it was finishing that was tough.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#172

Post by OJFord »

sabjut wrote: post #168
thatguymike wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major difference between UK and US undegraduate courses is that when you study undergraduate at a UK university, you _only_ do courses in your chosen course of study. No faffing about for a year or two picking a major, no time spent filling language requirements or taking interesting-sounding courses to scratch an itch. As a result, UK graduating undergraduates tend to have spent more time in their chosen field o…

Not exactly sure about the UK specifically, but elsewhere in Europe you can absolutely take any course that the university offers - it just wont be accredited and you will gain 0 ECTS Points, which you need to collect in a timely manner to complete your degree.

Yes you generally can in the UK too, just ask the lecturer as a courtesy at least, if there's capacity they'll probably be pleased someone's keen, but might ask you don't submit any problem sheets or whatever for grading.

That's not what GP means though: in the first year in the US, generally speaking, undergraduates aren't enrolled on a particular programme; they take a range of courses from different faculties for credit, and decide which area to 'major in' (and perhaps additionally 'a minor') later.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#173

Post by randomdata »

shoyer wrote: post #95
wanderingmind wrote: post #78

For all the fantasy here, let me remind you doing a PhD at an early age is one of the worst things you can do to your financial security (CS Ph.D being a major exception). It does not teach any employable skills, leads to a very high level of depression/anxiety compared to regular jobs and creates a huge opportunity cost where you miss out saving money early that has true compounding capability. The 2019 Nature surve…

A PhD is certainly not for everyone (or even most), but it's rather unfair to say that it does not teach any employable skills. Even PhDs who go on to work in completely unrelated fields learn how to make progress on poorly defined problems and to advance the frontier of human knowledge. And a PhD is also of course a hard prerequisite for career in academia or research. As for that survey of PhD students, I suspect y…

> but of course that doesn't mean that nobody should have children!

Of course. For some short-term pain, the child's labour capability provides a clear economic benefit.

What are you going to get out of your short-term PhD pain? At best a job, where you are still limited by your individual labour output. Not exactly a scalable model.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#174

Post by nopinsight »

soheil wrote: post #87
tomrod wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If you plan to be successful, there is little to no time outside of being a PhD student. If you want to be in the top 1%, and especially the top 0.01%, you should plan to spend your free time researching to become an expert in your field. But such numerical distinctions are typically meaningless since, by virtue of working towards a dissertation, you should be pushing the boundaries of your field of knowledge and…

Take olympic athletes. There are differences not only in the level of work but also physiologically between those who win gold medals and those who can't be olympic athletes. If you're a would-be gold medalist why isn't it possible to settle for getting into the olympics and have a job on the side?

That's an interesting analogy. If you can find recorded examples of part-time Olympic athletes from a competitive country that would help your point. By a competitive country, I mean one with non-negligible chance of getting a medal in that sport.

I wonder if they exist and if so, how rare.

I suspect it's extremely rare or non-existent for an athlete who holds another full-time job up to the selection time to get selected into a US Olympic swimming team, for example.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#176

Post by bambax »

My father earned a PhD in Political science (in France) when he was 70; his thesis was 500+ pages long. He retired early and spent all his time on it. It made him pretty happy.

He's now 89 and while he hasn't done any new research, he's still intellectually and physically very active.

Retirement is not the time to do nothing, it's the time to do what you really like. I can't wait.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#177

Post by barrkel »

ratww wrote: post #166
skissane wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same with undergraduate study. In countries such as the UK or Australia, the majority of Bachelor's degrees take only 3 years, versus a standard 4 year minimum for the US. I get the impression that a lot of US-based hiring managers don't know about this, but even if they do, nobody really seems to care much anyway. Unless it is your very first job after university, what you did as an undergraduate rarely ha…

Anecdotal, but I never saw a hiring manager complaining about degrees from elsewhere. Even in cases where documentation was asked (a FAANG... and Immigration too) a diploma equivalence is enough.

Hiring managers, agree. Sourcing recruiters, not so sure. For the conveyor belt directly from college into FAANG internship and onwards, I expect you'll have an easier time at a big name.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#178

Post by foldr »

shoyer wrote: post #95
wanderingmind wrote: post #78

For all the fantasy here, let me remind you doing a PhD at an early age is one of the worst things you can do to your financial security (CS Ph.D being a major exception). It does not teach any employable skills, leads to a very high level of depression/anxiety compared to regular jobs and creates a huge opportunity cost where you miss out saving money early that has true compounding capability. The 2019 Nature surve…

A PhD is certainly not for everyone (or even most), but it's rather unfair to say that it does not teach any employable skills. Even PhDs who go on to work in completely unrelated fields learn how to make progress on poorly defined problems and to advance the frontier of human knowledge. And a PhD is also of course a hard prerequisite for career in academia or research. As for that survey of PhD students, I suspect y…

> it's rather unfair to say that it does not teach any employable skills. Even PhDs who go on to work in completely unrelated fields learn how to make progress on poorly defined problems and to advance the frontier of human knowledge.

Depressingly, about 0.001% of employers care about these skills.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#179

Post by [deleted] »

tombert wrote: post #3

This is really cool. I'm 30 right now, and only just recently finished my bachelors and have been looking to get a PhD, but it's really hard to find a program that will let you work full time while doing it. It doesn't help that a part of me does sort of feel "too old" to do this sometimes. The PhD system in the US is really tailored around the assumption that you haven't entered the corporate world yet. Anyway, it's…

[deleted]

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#180

Post by conjectures »

ildon wrote: post #148
tombert wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You definitely aren’t too old By "old" I didn't mean actual biological age exactly. I guess the more appropriate word would be something more like "settled". As it stands, I have a mortgage and whatnot to take care of, it's not really realistic for me to quit my job and focus full-time on a PhD for the next 5-6 years. > but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere That seems to b…

EU Professor here. You're right, expectations are very different in the "old continent". Things very quite significantly from country to country, but generally speaking in most EU you can do your PhD while working. Retrospectively, knowing what I know know, I should add that if I were to start a PhD now I wouldn't trust a university that asks for a full time commitment, no exceptions. I would be very suspicious that…

> in most EU you can do your PhD while working.

You really can't at good universities in the UK. At Cambridge we had to get special permission to live more than 10 miles from Great St Mary's. My advisor's advice was that it was near impossible to finish up while working.

Had enough of Americans telling me about their excruciatingly long PhD programmes when half of that time is spent teaching and doing exams which we'd probably call an MSc. Or half of a post-doc position.

3-4 years is a great length of time for a contract where you're subject to such a power imbalance.

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