Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm going to graduate school in the fall, for Food Science. It's an M.S. program, but I'm hoping to do well enough to transfer to the Ph. D program.

I'm really excited!

So, I'm just wondering -- any grad students here? Anyone going to grad school, or finished? What were your experiences like? How did you get funding? How was your research, and dealing with classes and exams? How were your advisors?

I have plenty of questions about other people's grad school experiences, as you can see. XD

That's cool that you got nice advisors! Teaching assistantships were enough to see you through, huh? I hope that'll be the case for me, because God knows, I don't want any more debt. XD

I was accepted into two programs. One would have been $40,000 a year at one of the best schools in the country for my field, and the other wanted to pay me $17.20/hr 20hrs/wk as well as waiving my tuition and providing health care benefits at still a top-20 school in my field. I opted for getting paid.

My ex-boyfriend in another field was also TAing to get through his Ph.D. program, and was getting $10.20/hr, while the med school TAs were getting something like $25/hr, so it does vary widely field by field. Also the competition for those TA spots varies a lot. In my department, only 20% of the applicants for positions got offers, but in other departments, they were sending out notices to us to find interested students. Some of my classmates got TAships in completely unrelated courses. I assume there are big differences between schools as well.

RAships got similar pay/benefits, too, if you could find a professor who needed the help.

I spent 3 years in grad school- it was fun cause you really dont have tests (in class) anymore.

I went to a small school so the teachers really got to know you in the program that you are in. Plus you had the same people in all the classes that you were taking and could share war stories with them.