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Why Is US Grad School Mainly Non-US Students?
I am a new graduate student in Computer Engineering. I would like to get my MS and possibly my Ph.D. I have learned that 90% of my department is from India and many others are from China. All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that? I have heard that many of the smarter Americans go into medicine or the law and that is why there are so few Americans in engineering. Is this true?
Philip Greenspun has a very good article on why becoming a scientist doesn't make sense for most people:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
The article is titled "Women in Science," but it basically argues that the preparation costs for becoming a scientist (college, grad school, post doc) are so high, and the economic rewards so low and uncertain, that intelligent people are more likely to be drawn to other fields like medicine.
I see this attitude often, and it baffles me.
Depending on your major, you shouldn't foot the bill. In engineering, it is rare to find someone paying for his advanced degree. They usually have a teaching or research assistantship. At most, the ill informed come and pay for the first semester themselves, and then get some sort of funding after that.
Same goes for science (in fact, often science departments don't admit if they don't have funding).
In humanities/social science, things are more competitive. Harder to get funding there, but a lot of people still find away.
When I was graduating with my BS, most of my fellow grads used the "can't afford grad school because I've got enough debts already" excuse. Pity they never bothered asking the grad students in their departments how they were being funded...
When I was applying to grad school, my plan was that if I can obtain funding prior to starting, I'd go. Otherwise, I'd get a job. Paying for grad school was a no-no, as it should be.
Beetle B.
You pay no income tax only if you don't have income. TA/RA stipend is income and taxed. On campus work is taxed.
The stipend is same for everyone and is advertised on the department website.
No they are not exempt!
YOu are making stuff up.
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I agree with you, but someone needs to correct this idea that Japan's economy is still in stagnation. It has been growing far faster than the Eurozone for the last several years. The economic stagnation basically ended 3 to 4 years back. on top of the high rate of growth, prices are stable to slightly falling in the country amplifying the gains. I won't go into the structural problems that remain and social issues that still hold back this economy, but it is by no means stagnant.
More importantly, 90% of American engineering students realize that the only reason for getting an MS in engineering is to teach. I'm yet to find someone who thinks he learned something worthwhile in post-grad engineering school.
Getting an MBA has actual value. Working and gaining real-world experience has actual value. Meaningful research is a noble task, but... there isn't that much of it going on in most programs from what I can tell.
Contrast that with India or Germany, where you basically need a PhD to get a job flipping burgers (yes, sarcasm), and it is easy to understand why Americans are a minority.
Also, it isn't a recent change; it's been true for the past 20 years.
Orders of magnitude are based on a log-10 scale. When one says "x is an order of magnitude greater than y", one means "log x is 1 greater than log y". For instance, 1000 is an order of magnitude greater than 100 because log 100 is 3 and log 1000 is 4. Likewise, log 2 billion is 9.3, and log 300 million is 8.4. As you may have gathered by now, 9.3 is almost one more than 8.4.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
In what part of the country is $60k/yr lower middle class? Maybe in SF, but you can pull down that sort of money hauling trash there.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
What's so hard to believe about his income If he's not employed full-time, he could easily make $10,xxx a year without being a complete slacker. 35 hours a weeks will get him $10,xxx gross, and that's damned close to full-time. If he's an adult student, and therefore trying to better himself, then it's *really* likely he's not working full-time. Regarding the comment about his internet connection, I did the math some 20-odd ways when I was in between contracts: buck-for-buck, my internet connection was the cheapest way to research/apply for jobs, be reachable by contract agencies, and also have enough entertainment that I didn't completely lose my mind.
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200K * 6% per year interest is 1000$ a month, plus a bit of paying off, say 1200$ a month; 60K income per year gives you 5000$ a month, taxed at perhaps 30% makes 3500$ - 1200$ = 2300$ a month free for food, gadgets, children and repairs. Maybe it's because I live in a relatively risk-free area, but if 6% is reasonable, then your calculations are way off.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
k...looking at Quicken Loans, if you have good credit you can get a $190,000, 30 year fixed loan (you need at least a 5% down payment these days, $10,000) at 6.25% interest, which is $1,169 a month. That's with good credit of course, but that's a whole 'nother discussion. If you really want to get ahead of the curve, pay an extra $100 to $200 a month against the principle.
You can play around with the extra payments (prepayments) at Karl's Mortgage Calculator if you want. In the example above, an extra $100 from the start shortens the loan from 30 years to 24 years, 3 months. $200 a month would shorten the loan to 20 years 7 months.
So, in short, you're way off base. :-)
$200k will get you a nice house in a lot of the country...and it'll get you more in a few more months. ;-)
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And if your property taxes on a $200,000 house are $3600 a year (and some places, like New Jersey, can easily hit three times that level of taxes for a $200,000 home) and you're also smart enough to have homeowner's insurance and flood insurance (where floods are a risk), and your monthly payment is around $1600.
Still doable on a $60,000 gross income, but not by as much of a margin as you'd think.
And property taxes are a tough one. Most parents have three choices: pay cheap property taxes in a district and send your kids to mediocre public schools, pay high property taxes and send your kids to decent public schools, or pay cheap property taxes and then spend lots of extra money sending your kids to decent private schools.