<p>Would it be too much to go that far or does it have benefits?
What kind of jobs, lifestyle, and salary could one expect?
Thanks.</p>
<p>You could enter academia as a assistant professor of aero, perhaps after a post-doc. Then, if/when you get tenure, you’ll have a guaranteed job for life. You could work in the R&D division at an aerospace firm or at a government organization such as NASA. You could also choose the strategy consulting/investment banking pathway that seems to be so popular with many PhD graduates from top schools these days (although investment banking is probably not so popular nowadays). For example, in 2008, one of the MIT aero PhD students took a job not in the aerospace industry but at the elite strategy consulting firm, the Boston Consulting Group.</p>
<p>One thing Sakky did not mention was that many astronauts also hold their PhD’s in Aerospace from MIT.</p>
<p>hmmm
What are some of the top salaries that the best aero eng. make?
Talking about maybe the top 1%. Just out of pure curiousity?</p>
<p>As a pure engineer you are looking at low to mid 6 figures. I would imagine a couple of the fellows at the big firms touch 200k but that’s the extreme and after like 40 years of working.</p>
<p>What else is there besides pure engineering in the aero field?</p>
<p>you could go over to sloan, get an mba, and work in the management side. a lot of defense contractor execs have a phd and an mba</p>
<p>Or you could, as I said, just enter consulting or banking directly after graduation, as many MIT engineering PhD’s do.</p>