<p>Hi everyone!</p>
<p>I have recently received an offer of acceptance from UT Southwestern and am very happy about it. :)</p>
<p>At their interview, the dean made a big point that students will be supported with a stipend as long as they are PhD students in good standing. My question to you is: is that really out of ordinary? Do most schools only fund you for 5 years or so?? Does it totally depend on your PI???</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I have never heard of a school that doesn't guarantee you funding as long as you are making acceptable progress on your PhD.</p>
<p>thanks belevitt! :)</p>
<p>5-year funding is the normal nowadays in PhD programs. Some programs only offer 4 years.</p>
<p>tenisghs, thank you for the info.</p>
<p>For programs only offering financial support for 4 years, do you know what the students do to survive? You certainly would not be able to take a second job while trying to finish off your dissertation, right?</p>
<p>Any info would be appreciated. Thank you.</p>
<p>Take out loans, get fellowships/scholarships, get a job (some do this and write their dissertation)</p>
<p>I believe in some cases you don't necessarily have to live on campus after the third year.</p>
<p>Why would they fund you for 5 years but not the 6th. Surely, you will have to apply for an extension if that were the case.</p>
<p>belevitt, many grad programs are under pressure to get as many grad students done with their dissertations as possible. The best programs generally have the funding to offer students the best packages. Five years is usually enough time to do coursework, pass the qualifying exams, conduct original research and write up the dissertation. Some individuals need an extra semester or year for various reasons. Who wants to stay in grad school for more than six years?? People need to get on with their lives.</p>
<p>Let's talk in six years.</p>
<p>I didn't know InsiderHigherEd recently published an article on time to degree progress.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Impact of ‘Time to Degree’</p>
<p>The most logical reason to focus on “time to degree” for doctoral students is that most of them say they want to finish — and most graduate departments say the same thing. People are happier and programs are more efficient.</p>
<p>But a new national study suggests another key reason — at least in social science disciplines: Those who finish earlier than others do are more likely to land jobs on the tenure track. Of those in the national sample whose first job was on the tenure track, the median time to completion of Ph.D. was 6.5 years. For those whose first job was an academic position off the tenure track, the median time to completion was 7.5 years.</p>
<p>The data are from “Does Time-to-Degree Matter?,” a new analysis of the “Social Science Ph.D.’s — Five + Years Out” project, which has been yielding a series of insights into the path students take in graduate school and beyond. The work is done at the University of Washington’s Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education and is based on national data on doctorates in anthropology, communications, geography, history, political science and sociology.</p>
<p>Maresi Nerad, director of the center and associate graduate dean at the university as well as principal investigator on the research, said that the finding has several possible implications. One is that those doing the hiring view “time to degree” (fairly or not) as an indicator of quality. She said that the findings can suggest inappropriate considerations (favoring younger candidates) or skepticism about whether someone taking a long time to finish a dissertation may also take a long time to finish a first book or other research projects.</p>
<p>While Nerad’s research has stressed the importance of helping graduate students finish in a timely manner, she said that hiring departments’ preferences could play out in good or bad ways if they influence doctoral students’ behavior. To the extent that students are motivated to get through on time (and that departments help them do so), it’s all for the good, she said. But if this encourages students to pick only “safe” topics — those assured of a reasonably timely completion — for dissertations, that’s not so good.</p>
<p>Other findings from the new analysis support the idea that graduate programs need to spend more time on helping graduate students prepare for their careers — not just their dissertation defenses. In surveys of Ph.D.’s wherein they evaluate their programs, those who finished doctorates sooner than others were more likely to give “excellent” rankings to both their mentoring and training and also to “professionalization” activities, which include programs to prepare graduate students for careers (both finding jobs and being socialized into academic life).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is an excellent question I never considered.</p>
<p>No matter what, I would not go to a program that only offers 4 years of full stipend considering most biology PhD's take 6 years.</p>
<p>I agree, shnjb. It surprised me that they made a big deal out of it at UT Southwestern, and I guess that IS a huge plus. I am eager to find out whether the other schools on my list will offer full funding for as long as you are there.</p>
<p>And then there are some PhD programs that won't even fund your first year. That's a warning sign to don't go there!</p>
<p>Fortunately, there is no program like that in biology.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Five years is usually enough time to do coursework, pass the qualifying exams, conduct original research and write up the dissertation.
[/quote]
The average time to degree in most biomedical sciences PhD programs is 5.5 years -- for the average student, eleven semesters is enough, but clearly not for a large percentage. I speak for myself here when I say that experimental organisms are not always accomodating of your data-collection needs.</p>
<p>As for the topic of the thread, in my program, you're only funded by the program for your first two years (when you're on an NIH training grant). After that, you're funded by your advisor, who must fund you until you finish your PhD, but could a) very strongly encourage you to apply for a fellowship, or b) request that you defend your dissertation even if you feel you want more time to get higher-impact papers. So even if your funding is guaranteed, your advisor can still strategize about paying for you.</p>
<p>My advice: get a nice fellowship to pay for yourself (e.g. NIH NRSA) so you can (sort of) be your own boss, regardless of the department's promises.</p>
<p>OH yeah that's right huh.
I guess I need to sleep because I knew that too but for some reason I was outraged by the idea of not being funded.</p>