<p>Is it possible to work at a think tank after your undergraduate studies.</p>
<p>If so, how is the pay.</p>
<p>Think tanks generally consist of highly accomplished and experienced individuals.</p>
<p>You might get a job as an analyst or something. But, I imagine most are PhD academics, authors, and ex-politicians/corporate executives, etc. </p>
<p>Interesting topic BTW.</p>
<p>A close relative of mine is on the board of one think tank and associated in various ways with others. There are always staffers with only bachelor's degrees who are learning to do research and are busy making connections. None stay long, or are expected to stay long. They move on to law school or grad school. </p>
<p>Think tanks are a good place to line up summer internships. Some of them in DC and elsewhere maintain apartments for highly qualified interns.</p>
<p>What do think tanks actually do?</p>
<p>What is a think tank?</p>
<p>Some group you never heard of who goes on NPR and comments about some issue. I always imagine two guys in a little cramped office with "Institute of Indo-Asian Affairs" on the door.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^
well i'm talking about bigger ones such as brookings, heritage, aspen etc</p>
<p>BTW, a think tank a policy institute that works with the government to create effective policies. I think of it like working at a university, without the teaching, and only the research.</p>
<p>Also known as policy institutes and by other names. They research public policy issues. There are a number devoted to studying tax, education, trade, energy policies, etc etc. They have in-house scholars who publish papers and books, but they also distribute research funds to faculty at universities to write papers and books.</p>
<p>Heritage, Brookings, Cato, AEI, many others. The handy Wiki entry below has links to lists, grouped by labels such as conservative, liberal, libertarian...
The people I know who work closely with various think tanks are economists, education policy types with a variety of backgrounds, lawyers with expertise in specific areas, former political science professors, and others.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tanks%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tanks</a></p>
<p>Barrons, cramped little offices? Afraid not. We're talking splendor here.</p>
<p>So in other words you gather a bunch of like-minded people to come up with reasons as to why they're correct?</p>
<p>Besides waiting until you get a graduate or professional degree, your best way in, I would surmise, would be to do some internships or get in at the executive (i.e. non-analytical) side. For example, you could probably get in to the fundraising or administration side of, say, Brookings without an advanced degree full-time, but you probably wouldn't be the one authoring position papers.</p>
<p>RacinReaver, I don't think the cynicism is warranted, in general. Learn a bit about some of them and then decide where you stand.</p>
<p>NewEngSocSciMan has an excellent point. The people who work as career administrators are not generally scholars.</p>
<p>Well, if you can brand things as sources of political ideas and justifications, then how sure can you actually be of the unbiasedness of the sources?</p>
<p>To the OP, the answer is yes. My S is a research assistant at Brookings with a BA in Sociology. Check the jobs link at the Institution for pay levels. And yes, eventually he will go to grad school.</p>
<p>beaver- think tanks gather really bright individuals to analyze the "big picture what if's"- economic, scientific, etc. Do some research on the Rand corporation. Not all think tanks have a political bias.</p>
<p>Actually, RR, I only suggested looking at the political-label links in order to provide you with the names of the some of the well-known ones. I disagree with the labels for many of them; rather, I should say that I disagree that the work published by them can be reliably characterized by simple political labels.</p>
<p>I was not talking about the big ones like Brookings or Rand. Those are research institutes. I was talking about all the ones they seem to find on NPR with names I guarantee only a few people know.</p>
<p>Think tanks exist for the sole purpose of giving politicians "research" that they want to support their own views. RAND is different, it was started by the Air Force not some hacks with money. Many think tanks aren't filled with PhDs either, only the best ones. Even CATO and Heritage are staffed by less than half PhDs.</p>
<p>
Do these qualify?: American Enterprise Institute and the New America Foundation</p>