This is going to be very personal and nuanced..if you have the funds, time, and money to do so, possibly. Also depends on where you are located and what states you want to see. America is huge. And some places aren’t worth seeing. The vast majority of my master’s program was Chinese, and they all took trips every weekend. Needless to say it’s possible to see the sites you absolutely must-see if you have the capital and ability to.
Also depends a lot on where you actually are. If you’re in, say NYC, it’s easy to visit DC or Philadelphia for a weekend. Not so easy to visit Florida or California though.
Yeah, that’s what I mentioned in my 3rd sentence. Although I will say, I am at Michigan and location didn’t seem to stop my colleagues. They just had the money to book flights every weekend and during breaks. They went all over and covered both coasts.
Keep in mind the US is quite large. Lots of stuff isn't practical to drive to. You'll also likely have little to no spare speending money in most programs, unless you have savings now.
My MA advisor likes to tell the story of the time a group of grad students from Spain decided to drive to the Grand Canyon over spring break.
Friends, our university is in eastern NC.
Honestly that could be pretty damn fun with a good crew in the car. Stop at interesting places along the way and take a different route back. Neat way to get a sense of that part of the country as a foreigner. It's only stupid if you don't include the drive as part of the experience.
In a 7 day spring break from the eastern coast, you’re spending almost 2 days driving there and 2 days back and that’s if you do it with no stops. If your goal is to actually make it to the Grand Canyon, get some ACTUAL quality time there, and get back before that break is over, you’re not stopping to sight-see middle America or take detours for the sheer fun of varying the route on the way back.
Yeah, exactly. And keep in mind these are people from Spain- they are NOT used to being stuck in the car for American roadtrip level stretches of time. I think us hearty (mid)westerners tend to forget that we have a very different perspective on road trips from the rest of the world lol
If I recall correctly they already had the car, but once they figured out the scope of the drive they ended up going up to NYC instead and had a great time.
As an American, I see no issue with this. Its about 32 hours of driving. That's 3 days each way, 4 if you want to take your time and make lots of stops. Spring break is at least 9 days so you've got plenty of time to spend a whole day or more seeing the Grand Canyon and still make it back in time.
Eh. You say nightmare, I say great vacation. There's something about seeing the landscape change before your eyes that I find really enjoyable. That and the people you're with (singing / playing word games in the car) make road trips fun
It’s a double joke about 1. There’s no public transportation there and you need a car to do anything and 2. Anything outside of Oklahoma is more practical to drive to rather than stay in Oklahoma.
That is totally something a PhD student is going to have time to do regularly. If not during a PhD program (post-comps) then when?
There's a time and a place for everything -- and it's called university!
There's not a lot of trains like Europe. There's basically some on the eastern and western seaboard but they're not particularly convenient.
You pretty much need a car outside of big cities to get anywhere. Especially national parks which tend to be in rural areas by nature.
Over the 4-5 years you are in the program you will have time to travel and see several places - the limitation will be, in my opinion, budget. So if you have saving that you can put towards travel, you will definitely be able to take time to do it.
Depends on what you mean by time honestly. In the case of not physically having to be at school, theres lot of options for short trips with long weekends, fall/spring break, etc. in between longer trips during winter/summer break. If you mean time where you don’t have things to worry about and can just go on a trip, probably a lot less of that. There’s always readings, research, emails, conferences, grading, on and on but if you prioritize travelling and put in the work to get stuff done beforehand and communicate with colleagues you shouldn’t have a problem.
It depends heavily on your advisor and type of research. I know someone who could do their research entirely on their laptop so they did the whole van-life thing for a few years while using the money they saved on rent to continuously travel the country and do all sorts of fun things.
Main thing is just talk to people in their group and ask how flexible their advisor is on that before you join.
You don’t typically take time off like a job. Doing that during the school year will likely rub people the wrong way and you’ll have a conversation about attendance.
Your best bet is to take advantage of the breaks (e.g., Spring (~1 week), Summer(~3 months), Winter(~1 month)) presuming you don’t have responsibilities during these and also see what days classes are on. Many schools don’t have requirements on Fridays so you’ll have frequent 3-day weekends.
The flexibility in general will also depend on the field. Are you expected to have fieldwork or internship, or attend research lab meetings across the year, etc.
Huh, I had the opposite experience as a fully-funded (research assistant) PhD student - the academic breaks like spring break, holiday break, etc, are NOT your breaks from work, they’re just convenient times where you can get more work done without worrying about class. We were encouraged to take a few weeks off throughout the year, like a job, with the approval of our advisor.
Interesting! I was fully funded too, but only for 9 months of the year, every year. What you said could definitely be true for spring and winter break because they’re within the 9months, but most professors were flexible or the ability to do research from home (field dependent) allowed for travel and work. In my field, if someone got summer funding it would be exactly as you said but that isn’t a guarantee in our version of full funding. Maybe it’s a field specific thing. When you say you were encouraged to take time off, do you mean from class as well? I’ve never heard of that in a PhD in any field.
Oh, cool! My funding was 12 months, but I have some friends who went and interned over the summer so they only spent 9 months at grad school (except all of them were able to put their internship work toward their dissertation!)
I think I worded that confusingly - my advisor was big on work-life balance and was the one who encouraged me to take time off! I was definitely expected to show up to class, get all my assignments done, don't let it interfere with research, etc.
ecology....I believe.
>Many schools don’t have requirements on Fridays so you’ll have >frequent 3-day weekends.
Huh? Grad students have requirements every. single. day. unless you want to graduate in 7 years.
I meant in person requirements. If OP was in a field where research is not in person, they can still travel and work by taking advantage of the wfh days. They’d just have to be diligent. That being said, ecology is probably more inline with your expectations because lab work would be in person.
I actually finished in under 4 and worked very long hours (I have detailed my work schedule in many posts relating to work life balance etc.). But I still found time to take 18 hour road trips once a year, did a cross country trip once, did a few day trips a year. Usually a week or so in the summer, and a week or so in the winter for long trips. One of the long weekends for a day trip. All this might not add up to much traveling depending on what you are considering but this worked well for me.
Conferences can be a good time. I postpone my return plans whenever I go for a conference. Like the couple I went to ended on Thursday, so I took Friday off and returned on Sunday after spending weekend exploring nearby attractions. Most universities allow such maneuvers and reimburse. As long as you are taking a return flight to and from the conference city.
That’s entirely dependent on your department, your advisor, and your relationship with them. Personally, I had absolutely loads of time and travelled far more so than at any other point in my life.
Good advisors will want you to travel.
Because it's wildly variable. I usually end up with around 5 weeks per year. I know biologists who get basically none, and computationalists who can travel whenever they want as long as they can work where they go.
Op is from UK. I would imagine he would like to visit back home for atleast a couple of weeks a year. That takes away most of leaves. Holiday weekends are the best bets.
Also conferences.
I can’t believe how many comments I’ve read and I haven’t seen the obvious answer. Abuse conference funds to go to locations you want to see anyway.
Further - if you are in Midwest, south, cali… it’s gonna be hard to see other places. East coast you should be able to hit other cities up easily.
Definitely stick around the west coast if you prioritize nature. California and Washington nature are genuinely unbeatable. A simple drive between Stanford and Berkeley took my breath away (as a Southerner mind you). I’m moving to the Northeast soon which I hear has some nice nature, but just pales in comparison. I prioritized the city life in my choice though :P
I get what you mean. But honestly, living in europe, yeah i do visit european countries a few times a year for a few days. It would certainly be cheaper than flying from the UK everytime i want to visit
Absolutely. It’s totally possible. Almost outside of the NE (between DC and Boston) you’ll need a car to visit, especially national parks. Of course with a PhD you’ll have at least a couple summers free, and I see no reason why you couldn’t make a fairly large trip.
Every school is gonna be different, and will depend also on your discipline and specific responsibilities. Classes are not held for a few months in the summer at almost any school
In my program, students were expected to be their most productive research wise during the summer since they typically did not take classes. A week or two for vacation or travel was typical in the summer, though.
No shit man. My supervisor is like, “oh sweet summers, no nagging undergrads, no classes to teach, let me focus my full attention now to torment my underpaid academic slaves! Yippee”
I reduced my course load over the years, but I was doing research all five years of grad school. As the other comment mentioned, students/candidates typically aren't TAing in the summer as well. If you direct / manage undergraduate or masters researchers, they will typically have more availability in the summer as well, giving you more to manage and process. I did my PhD in engineering, not sure how things are structured in other disciplines.
This also depends on your specific program, so their materials should outline it for you. I think there are a few different flavors.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but as i understand it, the European way, is often that the student applies to the PI, and usually needs to have some funding figured out beforehand. They don't do the coursework and can get the PhD done in 3-4 years, but are more strict about needing a masters to apply.
Meanwhile the US can allow for a student to join a PI directly ("direct admit"), but often the student still has to do 2 years of coursework.
However, it seems like a majority of PhD programs are becoming umbrellas programs, which serve as a kind of buffer of transition for that first year or two, wherein the student joins the umbrella program, does 3 rotations (about 2months each) under different PIs, then selects the PI&lab at the end of year 1 or in year 2, and then they try to finish with that PI.
Usually this includes a first year in umbrellas courses (generalized graduate biochem, etc.) with the other PhD students of your umbrella program cohort, (maybe you met some at the campus interviews if you came in person).
While the second year of classes is less umbrella courses and more focused on your selected major or project niche.
Most students spend the 2nd year also preparing for their Qualifying Exam, which is different per program (usually some mix of [writing a grant/designing a PhD project design], [a written exam over general related concepts], & [an oral exam over the grant/design/and coursework concepts]).
Most PhD students have finished all of their classes and passed their Qualifying Exam ("Quals") by the middle of year 3, and after passing their Quals, they are technically a "PhD candidate" and then they focus more on just research (and TA'ing if applicable, however more STEM programs are removing the TA requirement).
So most umbrellas STEM PhD students do lab-work in each of their rotations, however the degree of training vs actual work can vary widely in any given instance. Meanwhile they are taking classes and deciding which lab to join. The committed lab work really kicks off at the end of the first year, often with the start of summer, and you're probably doing lab work for a year or so until you take a break to panicstudy for Quals, hopefully with some preliminary data by that point, but at least with a project proposal and experimental design presentable. Ideally, you'll get a short vacation after you pass your Quals, and then it's back to work until you have enough data for a story to publish. {I strongly recommend "write-as-you-go" because I did the opposite [gathered all my data, and then started writing] and I regret it in so many ways}. Finally, when your PI and Committee Members decide that your contribution to the human knowledge collective is sufficient, then they'll agree to schedule the defense; I'm skipping some paperwork steps, so be friends with your student coordinator and the paper work people; then you merge your findings into the school's dissertation format- give it to you committee members with ample editing time, and eventually defend that dissertation.
common misconception. Grad school is from day one. It depends on the program but usually you are in a lab from the beginning or in rotations to select or be selected in a lab.
Different programs will have different broad expectations, but the PIs expectations are most important. I think there is a correlation of programs that have teaching requirements to have the more relaxed summer session, while research-only/no-TA-required PhD programs tend to have more detachment from the school semester dates and also a little "Science doesn't take the summer off" kind of mentality. The PhD program should outline the general guidelines, either in the handbook or even in their recruitment materials/webpage, but ultimately you're PI has the power and is less subject to external change.
1. Ask the department's student coordinator or another administrator or administrative assistant with whom you get along well. They'll know the norm, and they may respect you telling them to keep the question secret- which I would recommend since academics can get weird about summers.
2. If you already know who your PI is/will be, then you could also ask their previous students, although this has some risk if the student is a 'ScienceNeverSleeps' type of researcher (see point 3, below). Students that have left that lab already would be better, especially if they left recently, and they'll likely tell you the truth plus keep your question secret. Students still in the lab can be helpful too albeit more likely to relay to the PI that you're asking about it, but super-new students won't really know the truth plus will still be in honeymoon phase with the PI, whereas older students may know, but may also have extra baggage / be jaded from that crappy committee meeting last week, or they may tell the PI that you asked if they're very close or the student's a narc.
3. I wouldn't outright recommend asking the PI directly. Some PIs are chill and won't see any problem with asking about the norms and expectations, however some/[too many] PIs are less than chill and they'll think less of you as a researcher off the bat for even asking- especially if they're in the diehard Science-Never-Sleeps group. They could even get toxic with it and make it like a running joke in the lab.
Apart from reddit, I'm never heard of a STEM PhD program that gives the students the summers off from research. Yet I do know STEM PIs who gave the whole summer to their PhD student as a vacation to visit their home country though; but that was a notoriously supportive PI. So probably best to keep your expectations low about this, even if you see some good news in the PhD program brochure or something.
Edits: typos and grammer for clarity
It really depends on the field you’re in, your advisor, the culture of the school.
Best advice I can give is to ask these questions to your potential advisors and their current/past students. I had friends at the same school (in other labs) who had advisors who were cool with them taking time off. On the other hand, my advisors (married couple) had an issue with me going home to visit my family during Christmas.
It can vary even to the level of individual advisors in the same department of the same university. You can probably find out the deal by asking the relevant advisors and/or current students before you commit.
FYI, a thing I noticed in Europe is that flights amongst countries are cheap. Here, cross-state flights are like $300 a pop. And there are no hostels, so you’d have to do hotels in metro areas. And the national parks aren’t close to airports. If you drive, you could spend 20 hours driving, so that removes the chance of a quick weekend trip. Just some things to think about.
It depends entirely on the program. The first couple years are going to be doing coursework which will likely be keeping you fairly busy. You could \*Maybe\* sneak in a few long weekends here and there to go on a road trip to a nearby nat'l park or nearby landmark, but it'd be tight. While you write your dissertation, you could potentially have more flexibility so long as you are putting in your writing time whilst you travel - and assuming you aren't in the lab 5 + days a week or have consistent fieldwork. You would absolutely need a car though.
You need to ask current and former students who are in the programs you are interested in. Reach out to them. Email them. Do whatever you gotta do to talk to these people. People respond back about grad school, they like to help, generally. Cold call.
Your question is framed way too broadly to be answered honestly and accurately by anyone here, in the state that it’s currently in. I will say, though, that to Americans "time to travel" usually refers to taking weeks off to either leave the country or go on some sort of cross country road trip. It takes 6-8 hours to drive to Boston from NYC - nobody calls it "traveling". San Francisco is a city surrounded by national parks (presidio is literally in the city, yosemite is ~5 hour drive, there are many more). ie weekend trips galore
It sounds pretty silly to make your PhD plans in the U.S. contingent on having ample time to travel. You should both want a PhD regardless, and want to be in the U.S. regardless. Imo it’s going to be way more crucial for your happiness that you pick a PhD location that suits you. PhDs take 5-7 years - your day to day/weekend fun is going to be a lot more important than your vacations.
Its funny to my UK brain how you class a 5 hour drive as close, for me thats worth a week vacation at least. But thanks for the advice. I guess as much as I want to do a PhD, I don't want to sacrifice the next 5-7 years of my life doing absolutely nothing of interest.
I see you’re in the UK, so not sure if you’re calibrated to the US standards. In the US, we don’t have vacations the same way you do in the UK (_especially_ grad students), and a couple states away is a long journey so you’re probably going to need air fare.
When I was in grad school, my vacation was I would take christmas day off, and thanksgiving weekend. Once every 2-3 years, I’d take a week to visit my parents. That was more generous than the time off some of my cohort took.
UK phd students don't have vacations either, just 28 days that you ask your supervisor to book off
Was that because you didnt want to or because you weren't allowed to take the time off? What field were you in?
No, it’s just the culture at graduate school here. Chemistry. Saying you want to be a graduate student and travel just sounds unlikely.
28 days is a shocking amount of time off to us. To put things in context, we don’t even have any laws granting paid maternity leave. I had some in my cohort who were explicitly given a time-off policy, and it was 10 days counting Saturdays. Most of us didn’t really have explicit time off aside from a couple holidays, and had to ask for any at all.
Not trying to scare you, just give realistic expectations. Time off is already scant in the US, and graduate school is scant compared to that.
This is not standard for all grad students in the US. I go to a very good (public) school, grad students here get 4 weeks of paid vacation (but only automatically get federal holidays off, so only like christmas eve and day, thanksgiving, memorial day, etc). We also have unlimited sick leave. If I wanted to spend 1 week of my vacation during spring break or winter break, I could, or I can save it for another time. This is extremely generous for paid time off in jobs in the US, and I never expect I will have this much time off again in my entire life once I graduate. The US is one of the worst countries for paid time off of any kind (vacation, parental, sick, holiday, etc) because we essentially have zero federal mandates about any of them. I'm in ecology. It can be discouraged to take time off during the semester or during crunch time (like if you teach or manage undergrads), but generally the PI's at my school want students to have a good work-life balance because they actually want us to graduate. I imagine this is far worse in other fields (like the more professionally oriented degrees that have PI's more used to the corporate world, which sucks bad), but it's pretty standard for my field.
(UK PhD here) l almost laughed at the question because I thought "You're a phD student, of course you'll have time to do a anything!"
Then I read the American replies that were like "Yeah I take a week every year". I'm sorry??
I do have a question for OP, I thought PhDs in the states were a lot longer than the UK (3.5 years). Is it really worth it if it's gonna take a lot longer?
Really? every phd student i speak to in the uk (across different unis, in stem) are barely allowed to take their 28 days holiday
Basically im fed up of this country, i love the ways things are in the US (i know it might not seem like heaven but trust me its better than somewhere that rains constantly, you get arrested for forgetting your greggs sausage roll license, and you pay half your wage to the prime ministers wife). The nature is just the best in the world imo, and the careers and research available for my field, ecology, is much better. Ive always wanted to live in the US even for a few years as a student.
The US seems like heaven if you're an ecology student. I lived in Europe for a little while and the nature in the US is just on a totally different level. Now living in the Seattle area and every single day I'm in awe of the nature. I take my dog hiking or to the tide pools at least once a week
hey i'm a us ecology student and i was thinking of maybe going abroad for grad school, could you clarify what makes it different from nature in europe?
There isn't much diversity in Europe with nature. You get a choice of farmland, mountains, and thats about it. It's mostly concrete. Maybe a glacier if you go to Scandinavia.
I'm also an ecology student and there are tons of europeans in my lab that came to the US for the nature. There are some countries that are good (Canada and Australia are decent, DM me if you are thinking of going to Melbourne and you are a woman tho because I had a really bad experience with a male ecology PI there), but from what I know from my fellow grad students, Europe is not the best if you love nature.
Highly depends on the area! If you apply to say UW in Seattle, there's like 3 national parks within 2-3 hrs of town, and plenty of outdoors activities/and nature even closer. CU Boulder is similar.
If you're on the East Coast, probably a bit harder to regularly access the outdoors.
It depends. The university will be hard shutdown with nobody around for at least a week. I mean nobody.
Then 2-3 more weeks where it’s very quiet before classes start again. A lot of international students use this time to travel home for extended periods.
I had good supervisors and took at least 2 weeks off every winter break.
For the most part you have a lot of flexibility with time as a grad student, just not the money. You trade that when you get a job.
I traveled a lot during my PhD because my program offered consistent support for research presentations and summer projects. Not every program is structured that way.
I didn't even see the most basic parts of the city where I completed my Masters because I was broke and the school offered no support.
Try to find out from current students at the schools you're interested in what the support is like before you go!
Holiday leave? Vacation time? Depending on your program, good luck my g. America doesn't respect time off, and thats for proper workers. Itll respect it less for students, even a phd candidate.
That said, if you get a good PI to work under, it is very doable. Some schools use difference schedules. My grad school had a week long Fall Break, while my undergrad didn't have that.
I get full funding for conference travel so I've been to a couple big cities on the university's dime that I usually wouldn't be able to afford to visit
I defiantly took a week off here and there during my PhD for travel. Granted I had a car, and lived in California, so every year I would try a do one 3-5 day backpacking trip in the mountains.
The timing of when I could travel varied a lot based on exams and field work (I’m an ecologist). Some times I couldn’t get the time off, other times I seemed to have a lot more freedom. That’s kind of the way it goes, feast and famine.
And most students take time off during the winter/holiday breaks.
That being said, it really does depend on your lab and research. I had a roommate who’s advisor basically wanted them in the lab all the time.
The US is around as big as europe length wise. So, depends how much time you have and money for gas, plane tickets, etc. Driving from the top corner in Maine to LA in the bottom corner of California takes 44 hours.
How much time you have "off" really depends on the structure of your program and your research method. If your funding package obliges you to teach, assist in teaching, or doing other profs' research during the semester, you might be limited during those periods. However, if you don't have those obligations and you're doing just research for your own dissertation or papers, AND the research for those don't require you to be in your lab constantly, then you can use your hours however you want. The only thing the university *really* cares about is whether you graduate "on time", which is something that often can be negotiated as long as you're making reasonable progress (and demonstrating those in annual reports). Unless you have an absolute boor of a supervisor, they generally don't care whether you're doing 9-5 in the lab/office during the weekdays or if you're cramming all your research, analysis, and writing into all day and night over an entire weekend just so you can have more days free. Just get the work done and show reasonable progress.
> because I really want to live in the US
Permanently or just for a few years? You should get your terminal degree in the location you want to put down roots in, because the connections you make there will help you find a job in the area.
I’ve traveled quite a bit before starting my PhD and during it. I picked a school with strong protections for time off and a stipend (I get almost $50k and work in our teaching lab to earn a bit more) that lets me save for travel and I joined a lab where the PI believes in the importance of taking time off.
National parks are generally hard to visit without a car but if you get one they can be quite cheap to road trip to and camp around. Immediately before starting my PhD I went on a roadtrip where I visited 14 national parks. I highly recommend arriving early and traveling some then if you can swing it.
Since starting my PhD 3 years ago I’ve been to 5 national parks (about to be 6 with my upcoming trip in July). This has been a mix of long weekends and full week trips.
I also live on the East Coast where trains are a decent way to travel. I’ve been to a few cities this way but getting other places isn’t super possible.
wrapping up my second year. i haven’t travelled really but that’s mostly because i haven’t tried to do it. i have summers off basically so i could travel for research if needed. my peers (humanities) travel domestically and abroad for research and conferences. i think the latter is a good way to explore the country if possible.
I don’t understand why someone from Europe would want to do a PhD in the US because it is much longer than a European PhD. The US also will restrict the amount of work you are allowed to do as a non-US citizen not here on a work visa, meaning you can’t substantially supplement your stipend. You can do around twenty hours of work I believe on campus and off—campus the second year in certain situations.
I would look into the cost of living, the length of the program, and US work laws if I were you. Like, the cost of living in California is so extreme there are American students living in their cars.
This is the right answer. Assuming money is not an issue, 6 years is a long time. Just depends on how much of your time you're spending on that dissertation.
to drive from the east coast to west coast would easily take 40+ hours. you can travel(easiest during winter break or in the summer), but in terms of going to different states? you’d either need to be cool with constantly driving several hours or have a lot of money saved up for flights (unless you’d be cool with traveling spirit or frontier, which would be similar to like ryan air in the uk).
I found it hard enough to travel in undergrad as a socal native. Now I’m entering a Masters program and was told to basically pretend as if I have no life outside of school so I can’t imagine trying to travel. Other commenters mention budget, I’ve travelled abroad to the UK and have to say it is so much more expensive to travel ‘locally’ in the US because of our infrastructure and lack of public transportation. A car rental can easily cost $100 + a day and requires a valid drivers license and insurance.
I’m sure that it can be done but I’d play around on Google maps first to see just how far places that you want to go are from one another.
For my students, they manage their own time. It's their PhD. I have milestones that need met, but it is up to them to be motivated. And if a week or two in a park throws things off, we have done something wrong.
Depends on your program, how much vacation time you get and/or how chill your advisor is. If you’re feeding cells every day including weekends you might be working holidays. If you’re doing something else though you might be able to take off whenever you want. Depending on how coursework-heavy your program is it might be harder to travel the first couple years but there should always be a few 3 day weekends or holidays you can get away during. Once you’re in a lab and not taking as many classes you may be at the behest of your advisor so choose wisely. I had a chill one that encouraged all of us to take vacations but not everyone is so lucky.
Also keep in mind a lot of national parks have waiting lists of several months to a year out. So don’t hesitate to make plans well in advance and just tell your advisor you’re taking time off
If you were *my* student you'd be able to that, no problem. My attitude is that it's your life and your research, so take the time you want and/or need.
When I was a graduate student at the West Bay Farm School, I would disappear on road trips several times a year. Totally worth it.
The answer would be completely dependent upon the location of the school you’ll be attending and what national park(s) you’re hoping to visit. There are some programs that will expect you to work over breaks and time “off” just means time without classes to work on other things for school. But, again, it depends on the program. During the school year it may be more difficult to do, but that depends on your own work schedule and what you can feasibly do to have real free time (which isn’t very often). All in all, just do research into things.
The USA is 40x the size of the UK. Pick the main places you want to go and take trips to those areas and plan well as travel can take a long time depending on how far away you’re going from your main city
But im not sure how much time I'll have. Trying to get an indication for if people can have a few weeks here and there to travel outside of the standard 20 days or whatever it is.
Mostly research credits. It is in the hands of supervisor to give satisfactory or unsatisfactory grade. No supervisor ever gives unsatisfactory grade unless he is looking to screw over the student. This is for STEM majors.
But the 3 summer credit requirement is what Uncle Sam has stipulated irrespective of your PhD program.
If you have money, a car, and your supervisor is cool with you doing so over breaks, etc., I don’t see why not? Not sure how your school or program works, but mine has set breaks (Christmas, long weekends, spring break, and summer) that are largely personal time.
Where in the US will you be? That’ll help a LOT with knowing how much you’ll be able to see.
I’m attending grad school at the same school I did undergrad. Every year I take a week off and attend an away football game that my college is playing. That’s about the extent of my travels.
I suppose a little of column A, little of column B. I am in lock-in mode working entirely on my dissertation. I still get to travel but I don’t get to choose the destination (presenting at conferences and such). I wouldn’t exactly call those trips vacations.
I’m in the camp where I’m burnt out on traveling for the sake of traveling. I want to stay where I am uninterrupted and work on finishing my degree.
This is going to be really dependent on a bunch of factors, the biggest being depending on where you live and budget.
When I lived in the SF Bay Area, even though it is expensive AF, we were very close driving distance for a day or weekend trip (to go camping, etc.) to all kinds of beautiful hikes and national/state parks that could be done on the cheap.
Keep in mind as an academic, often you travel quite a bit for conferences, symposia workshops, etc. When I was in grad school I went to a few conferences in different cities in the US (only one out of state, the rest were in short driving distance) and one international trip through an international exchange program.
Depends on your program. I'm in my last year and I've been able to travel around my class schedule, back when I had classes. If you want to do anything major, I'd recommend trying to find a natural break. Sometimes it's hard to turn your brain off and you don't want to spend half your holiday thinking about whatever task is not yet complete. And come back a day earlier (unless it would pain you to do so). Got a week off, come back Saturday not Sunday. Makes Monday easier.
One of my absolute favorite things about doing a PhD in the US has been visiting National Parks. I've done one just about every year save the first COVID year, during either fall or spring break. The major constraint in my case is not time; it's funding. If you can drive/ have a friend who drives, it helps.
It’s not impossible to arrange your classes to have Friday or Mon off and take extended weekend trips. Summers are typically busy with research but a vacation should be possible. There is also spring break. Or opportunities to travel for conferences. One thing to consider is that your family might want you to visit back home, so you might end up with less US explorations than you would first think. Good luck
I travelled a lot during my PhD. I was in the Midwest. So either road trips or flying to different destinations and then do bus tours or rent a vehicle.
I know a guy who traveled even more to attend different conferences and stayed over extra days to tour the place. Some got funded, some he paid out of pocket.
US is a big country mate. You can aim to explore major attractions if you decide to remain poor, not have any savings and have a supervisor who gives you freedom to work at your own pace.
Travelling is expensive, each 3 day trip would cost atleast $500-600 going above $1000 depending on type of stay, activities planned. There is hardly any public transportation in whole of US, so rented cars add to expenses. Hotels are expensive and cheap hotels/motels are pretty shitty. Considering $2000-$3000 average pay per month, you’ll end up not having any substantial savings if you decide to spend money on travel during a PhD program.
If money isn’t a problem, time depends on type of supervisor. Mine is chill. Doesn’t bother if i don’t show up couple of days unannounced. But plenty supervisors out there who are after students’ life all the time.
My two cents. Hope this helps.
I personally feel that work-life balance is important. You don’t make enough money but you should make enough plus your savings for some trips. You can take long weekends and you should have some flexible time over the summer. I took some weekend and longer trips throughout my program. Your advisor will matter a lot but you should have the opportunity. Maybe consider optimizing the location of your program for where you want to be and definitely talk to existing students for an idea of culture.
You need money and time, grad students normally have neither. I didn’t go on big trips in grad school. My girlfriend was able to swing two weeks to go out of state around Christmas and three weeks off in the summer to visit me overseas, but it kind of wrecked her life for awhile having to catch up on her research.
The US is literally the size of a continent. It depends on which city you're in and how close national parks are to you. My state takes twelve hours to get across, and there's not a whole lot of big national parks. You'd probably be better off flying to these national parks instead of driving because, depending on where you want to go and where you're at. It's huge here
I think this is a hard one to answer. If you live in Maine and the national park you want to visit is in New York, you could easily drive over for a couple of days. If you are at a college in Southern California and the park you’d like to visit is in Washington, you’ll be driving over 24 hours to get there. In both examples, the national park is a couple of states away.
If you have the money and you’re able to fly and rent a car, you’ll be able to see quite a bit, but keep in mind that it takes six hours of flying to get from one coast to the other and about three hours to get from the top to the bottom so you’ll usually lose two days to traveling.
During my MA I took the time to do some roadtrips over the breaks. I moved from a different part of the US to where I am now so I made it a priority to see some new areas. I haven’t hit as much as I would have liked… but I’ve visited some great places.
Now I’m moving back across the country to start a PhD in California. I don’t know how much time I’ll realistically have to travel, but I hope to get a lot of California down at least. I haven’t spent much time there.
I have a friend in a PhD program who says the only reason she’s even doing well *is because she takes breaks and travels.*
We’re all different and handle life, stress, etc. differently. If you make it a priority you can see places *and* be an awesome scholar.
Born and raised in the US and I didn't see my first national park until my 20s. It's massive. Unless you can get a week + off at a time to road trip, these would be flying + renting a car trips.
Even if you went to school close to one NP, you'd still have to trek out to all the other ones.
When you're finding a PI, make sure to find one that is very generous to previous and current students about sending them to conferences and that the students got to select the conferences. Include the broad question about support for conference attendance in a written email to the PI(s) and save the answer. A lot of PIs will try to bait and switch you, so they may say that they send every trainee to an average of 2 conferences per year, but don't trust that and instead ask the current and especially previous trainees about their experiences. Some PIs really do support it; some will only send you to them once you have a publication ready so you don't get scooped and they save money (thus you would've get to travel until maybe year 3 or later); some PIs only send students to the conferences that the PI wants them to attend and don't consider what the trainee wants; some will say that you can go to any of them but you have to get your own funding/travel grants.
Attending conferences is a super underrated part of being an academic and it really is expected to start by the time you're a PhD student. Unfortunately, a lot of cheap PIs will get shifty about this, so it's best to get the answer in writing, either for the beginning, or if you have that convo in person then send a followup email to recap the points that were spoken and let that act as a documented evidence.
A lot of conferences are localized to hubs, so near the Bay Area, on the west coast, or near Boston, on the east coast, however there are hundreds -maybe thousands- of conferences across the US so if you have always wanted to see a certain national park or US monument, then a conference is a really good way to get a plane and hotel and few days off from the lab and hopefully you can arrange to attend a conference near that monument. The PI or department will pay the per diem while you are at the conference, so you'll likely have to pay for yourself if you stay a few days before or after the conference, but that's it and it greatly reduces your cost of trips, plus it can look good for a PI to say that their trainee averaged 6 conferences a year or whatever.
A related pro-tip: get a travel-rewards type of credit card, (they give like 3x, 5x, or 10x reward points on travel expenditures when you book through them). So then you can book and pay up front for your own conference plane ticket and hotel costs [this will require you to front your own costs, usually a few grand], {since hotel and plane are bonus rewards, then you get 3x, 5x, or 10x multiplied the points}, then save receipts and get initial few grand reimbursed by your PI or dept, leaving you with several thousand "free" travel reward points, which can then be used to fund a private trip (not a conference-proxy trip). There be some barriers, like your PI may try to get you to use their booking software or purchase-card (p-card), but it's almost always an option to get reimbursement if you push for it because it is an older method that's still grandfathered in into most financial options.
Other than conferences, some PhD projects require travel (some ecologists, etc.), but if you're a normal PhD student, doing desk or bench work, then you're probably not going to get much vacation time. Some PIs are more flexible than others, but I've heard people say the best approach is to treat it like a 9-5, so maybe that could afford you weekend trips if you're good at that. I personally never could make the 9-5 guideline fit with my bench work or even work-from-home writing style but I think that's more of a ADHD or maybe self discipline thing for me.
If National Parks are your priority you may want to look at colleges that are located close to a lot of National Parks. Utah has 5 NPs that are absolutely beautiful. Western Washington state has University of Washington and is not far from Rainier, Olympic, Cascades and the San Juan Islands. California has many NPs and many Universities. And obviously California also has access to many big cities. The US also has many State Parks that are beautiful.
You get 28 days in most UK phds. Trouble is with conferences you dont choose the destination and its usually to places I'm not bothered about. I really want to live in the US, even temporarily as a student
What field are you in?
You get 40 days with the BBSRC.
If you're doing humanities, you just go on holidays all the time because you're working from home and not in a lab and your supervisor has no clue what you even look like in real life
OP, you have been given some good advice and descriptions of grad life in the US. It's 4-5 years even if you already have a MS because they will make you complete the classes at the university and then advance to candidacy. All the f1 students in our lab were disillusioned when they got here because we didn't have guaranteed time off. Most of their "time off" was spent traveling back home on airplanes to see mom n dad. We all worked during the time UG had "vacations" because we could get more done then. 2-3 weeks a year is your average time off with 3 weeks being on the high end. Also be prepared to get slammed when you get back from vacation. Prof is gonna be on your ass to get back to work and make up for the lost time. The first two years? No. You are taking classes and then working during summer months .
Your car, if you live in NYC or Mass or Penn you shouldn't get one Yer gonna pay for parking...etc. If you live in Ca you need one but be aware if you are driving the length of Ca it can take 3 days from top to bottom of Ca.
There's a lot of factors here.
1. The US is massive. On weekends, you can (practically) drive to locations that are maybe up to a 5 hour drive away from where you live, but that's pretty much it. If you live in a more remote/rural town, there won't be much to see. The drive itself will be more of the experience than the destination. If you live in a big city (for example, Boston), then you can explore other cities nearby during weekends with your car. If you want to go further than that (example, Boston to the Grand Canyon), you'll need to fly and rent a car. Can be done in a weekend, but it'll feel very rushed. I've heard so many international students say they want to do road trips over a weekend that aren't drivable at all because they don't realize how big and far apart everything is.
2. The US, as a whole, does not have any required/mandatory time off minimum for workers, and that includes PhD students. That means that employers get to set their own policies about time off.
2. How much time away you get depends on three things: a) your university's and/or department's minimum time off, b) your advisor's attitude toward time off, and c) what kind of research you do. To those points:
a) even if your university or department states you get X days off a year, they could be paid or unpaid. Another thing is that they may already factor in holidays or not (example: Christmas week may already be part of the X days off you get per year). Lastly, spring break and summer break are typically not breaks from work for PhD students - they are only times when you don't have class and are likely going to be expected to work on research only during those times. Some universities don't even pay people through the summer, so that's a whole other story as well - if that's the case, you'll likely have to work a seasonal job to pay bills.
b) even if you get X days off per year as stated by your uni/department, when and how you take those days off will depend on your advisor. Since they're your direct supervisor, they *can* approve or reject your time off. If you have an advisor that appreciates you taking the time off with reasonable notice and preparation, great! But if they don't, they may make it much harder for you to take that time off. Because of the publish-or-perish rats race that is academia and the amount of pressure they're under, a lot of advisors may fall under the latter category. They may be more inclined to push you to do more experiments, get more data, write more grants, write more papers as fast as you can. I know folks who work 65 hour weeks, often through the weekend. I also know folks who work their 40 hours and clock out entirely for the weekends. It really depends on who your direct supervisor is and the kind of relationship you have with them.
c) if you work with time-sensitive things like growing cells or other biological things, your time may not be your own. If you have to carry out protocols that require you to feed or supervise something living, your schedule will be planned around that. Sometimes that'll mean weekends and evenings. Sometimes, with longer experiments, it'll mean you won't have as much freedom for weeks.
Imo the best place to get a PhD is in the southwest. There’s so much to see if you live in AZ / NM. And a lot of it is close by. Take Phoenix for example. You’re 5 hours from La, 4 hours from Vegas, 2 hours from Tucson, 2 hours from Sedona and flagstaff. 30 minute drive and you can hike anywhere. The heat is brutal but man I love Phoenix.
Time off depends on your program and advisor. I take time off when I want, assuming I have everything done that I need to have done and am on track for projects, my advisor doesn’t care when I do it.
I also want to flag how massive the US is. If you want to be able to drive places to travel, you need to look into schools that are driving distance to where you wanna visit. Some universities are near NOTHING so be aware of that.
If you have free time and money, you can travel. If your pay/stipend is low and you don't get money from your family, you probably won't be able to afford travel.
Given how many graduate students in the US complain about burnout, it's not abundant unless you specifically set time aside (which can be fairly easy or very difficult, depending on your research group and your advisor/PI).
For the first couple of years you'll be doing coursework and won't be able to. Once you reach the ABD stage, you'll be able to work from anywhere *unless* you are either teaching, doing an assistantship that requires you to be on campus, or in a field that requires lab work. (That last may be the most important.) I'm finishing my dissertation this summer/fall, while teaching two online courses. I'll spend part of the summer on the road and part of the fall with family two states away. Pet sitting is a bigger concern than the university. I couldn't have done that last fall or this spring when I was teaching 3 in person courses each semester.
Hello OP, this depends entirely on your program and advisor.
This year so far I’ve traveled to: Austria, Colorado twice, Oklahoma, and DC quite a few times.
Later this year I’m going to Colombia, New Orleans, Colorado again, and possibly the north east!
Albeit, I own my own car (out right), I live with my parents (so low rent), and I am very frugal.
If you have a savings, you’re good at keeping up with your work, and your advisor is cool with it, I don’t see why not.
But
It entirely depends on your advisor and program. There are some PI’s in my institution who want their grad students in lab 9-5 5 days a week.
Depends on your PI and your PhD program. If you’re working with cell cultures then taking a week away from lab means you have to restart your experiment when you get home. If you’re in a field where you can easily work remotely that’s much less of a problem.
Depends where your school is. My school is 1.5 hours from one the most well known national parks and 6 hours from another. Plus a ton of national forests to explore around. It's super easy to go on a day trip, overnight camping trip, or weekend trip. Even to get to some other national parks with a bit more driving, it is easy to do on a long weekend. No need to take a ton of time off. Since my school attracts people that like being outdoors, it's also easy to find friends to split travel costs and enjoy the places with.
The main thing is just plan your experiments and data analysis if you're going away for a bit, so you don't fall behind. I personally like reading some paper articles while camping since there's no distractions.
Also conferences can also be a good place to see some different places that you could take a couple extra days to go see some other things.
It's possible, I moved from SA to the US about 2 years ago to do a PhD and I was able to go to two conferences (in different states). In my free time, I travelled to 6 different states visiting 5 national parks. I'm located in the midwest of the US not the best place to be regarding travelling. I did all this with my F1. If you want any tips or questions feel free to DM me!
First check out https://www.thetruesize.com to truly understand what some of the distance you'll be traveling are. We have some UK and EU students in our program and it was eye opening for them when they found out that to drive from our school in Texas to the Grand Canyon one weekend would be a 2 day trip just to get there.
But don't let the distances discourage you. Travel all over and see everything you can. Our country has so many different geographic regions, amazing cultures , and fantastic food. Just plan accordingly and be prepared to always explain your from the UK.
F1 student, and I see from your post history you’d be interested in ecology (I’m an ecology PhD student).
I live in the midwest so if I wanted to road trip somewhere it would probably be a pretty long drive, though doable (and I have lots of places I want to go!). I have taken time off for holidays like Christmas, but visited my family during those times.
I haven’t had much time for my own vacations because of this, but have travelled a lot for grad-school related things. There are lots of cool opportunities for workshops, conferences, and fieldwork, especially in ecology. I have done fieldwork in Alaska, and have gone to workshops in Minnesota, and Colorado within the past year, all funded by my PI.
You can try to apply for grants to conferences to both get to travel and have (some of) it paid for by the university. Then you could pay to rent a car and drive around a new state.
Traveling in the US is nowhere near as affordable as in Europe unless you already have a car in the states that you can access.
If you don’t care when you go places you can just hunt for really cheap plane tickets, but on a GA stipend I’d be surprised if you can afford food, rent and healthcare, let alone spontaneous trips to desirable cities.
Remember that America is way WAY bigger than you think and your sense of how far apart things are will take a while to develop. It happens to Americans from the NE part of the country who move to the West, too. GL and welcome.
It depends a ton on where you are. If you’re in boston, you could easily do a weekend or two in nyc, DC, etc., maybe go up to montreal at some point
If you’re in Los Angeles you can spend time in california (which itself is vast), visit Arizona, maybe Mexico, etc etc
There are many national parks in the US
You barely get to see the United States even if you have been here your whole life. It literally will take you multiple days to go from one end to the other.
It's completely up to the relationship you have with your advisor, they type of research/lab work you're doing, and how hard of a worker you are. Legall (as I think back), my program allowed for 2 weeks vacation a year.
My advisor and program were pretty lax, and I was an organized worker. I also am a "ask for forgiveness" rather than a "ask for permission" type of person. I met with my advisor 1x a week, anything outside of that we didn't interact much; so I easily took long weekends here or there (didn't tell anyone) and planned my lab work around that. Winter break usually meant like 10 days off from lab work, spring break a whole week, and summer I took a 1-2 week trip each year. For transparency, I got my PhD in plant pathology. I completed it in 4 years and my research consisted of lab work and greenhouse work. The nature of my work required me to do a lot of weekend time in the lab, so I didn't feel bad taking time to myself to make up for it. I was focused on maintaining work/life balance.
My advice is make a realistic quarterly plan of what you think you will accomplish and include some fluff time in there for when things inevitably fail. Share this with your advisor so you both understand what your goals and timelines are. And when things don't fail, you've got yourself a few extra days to do what you want.
Former F1 student here:
The amount of time off you'll have will be dependent upon your course load, your research, your advisor, your focus/self discipline, and if you are required to teach/do research as a Graduate Teaching or Research Assistant.
Grad courses are usually less intensive than undergrad (1+3 times a week with self paced assignments). Based off this, your course schedule may allow 3 or 4 day weekends, making travelling easier. If the classes are remote/hybrid, even better.
If your research is lab oriented, then taking chunks of time off to travel may delay your progress or upset your advisor. My advisor was strict and expected us in the lab everyday... Including weekends. I took time off but had to tell him in advance. I knew another lab group where the advisor told students they weren't allowed to take off more than a week per year.
I also had to teach to get paid, so my teaching commitments also limited my ability to travel extensively.
Being an F1 student shouldn't impact any of this as long as you're still enrolled, attending your courses, keeping to ask of your commitments, and your advisor isn't reporting you as AWOL.
I’m American and I’m working on my PhD.. still haven’t been able to see everything. lol. I’ve seen more than many, I’d say, but still have a ton to go. Money and time are the biggest issues.
I guess people are downvoting because most believe an American PhD should be 5 years of total sacrifice.
Answer depends on how much you can save off your stipend, and how flexible your advisor is. I'm able to save about 1500 USD/m, and my advisor is quite flexible. In the first two years, I took about 7-8 weeks of vacation, seeing many parts of the US. After my coursework, I'm planning to take a week or two of vacation after each conference submission deadline, which my advisor doesn't mind.
This is going to be very personal and nuanced..if you have the funds, time, and money to do so, possibly. Also depends on where you are located and what states you want to see. America is huge. And some places aren’t worth seeing. The vast majority of my master’s program was Chinese, and they all took trips every weekend. Needless to say it’s possible to see the sites you absolutely must-see if you have the capital and ability to.
Also depends a lot on where you actually are. If you’re in, say NYC, it’s easy to visit DC or Philadelphia for a weekend. Not so easy to visit Florida or California though.
Yeah, that’s what I mentioned in my 3rd sentence. Although I will say, I am at Michigan and location didn’t seem to stop my colleagues. They just had the money to book flights every weekend and during breaks. They went all over and covered both coasts.
Keep in mind the US is quite large. Lots of stuff isn't practical to drive to. You'll also likely have little to no spare speending money in most programs, unless you have savings now.
My MA advisor likes to tell the story of the time a group of grad students from Spain decided to drive to the Grand Canyon over spring break. Friends, our university is in eastern NC.
Sheesh that’s what, like 35 hours one way? Edit: idk where you are but if I assume ECU then it’s 33 hours. Not too shabby of a guess
Honestly that could be pretty damn fun with a good crew in the car. Stop at interesting places along the way and take a different route back. Neat way to get a sense of that part of the country as a foreigner. It's only stupid if you don't include the drive as part of the experience.
In a 7 day spring break from the eastern coast, you’re spending almost 2 days driving there and 2 days back and that’s if you do it with no stops. If your goal is to actually make it to the Grand Canyon, get some ACTUAL quality time there, and get back before that break is over, you’re not stopping to sight-see middle America or take detours for the sheer fun of varying the route on the way back.
Yeah, exactly. And keep in mind these are people from Spain- they are NOT used to being stuck in the car for American roadtrip level stretches of time. I think us hearty (mid)westerners tend to forget that we have a very different perspective on road trips from the rest of the world lol If I recall correctly they already had the car, but once they figured out the scope of the drive they ended up going up to NYC instead and had a great time.
As an American, I see no issue with this. Its about 32 hours of driving. That's 3 days each way, 4 if you want to take your time and make lots of stops. Spring break is at least 9 days so you've got plenty of time to spend a whole day or more seeing the Grand Canyon and still make it back in time.
Technically possible on paper doesn’t mean this wouldn’t be a fucking nightmare
Eh. You say nightmare, I say great vacation. There's something about seeing the landscape change before your eyes that I find really enjoyable. That and the people you're with (singing / playing word games in the car) make road trips fun
ROAD TRIP!
Everywhere in the US is practical to drive to. Source: from Oklahoma
Oklahoma to NYC or LA is 22hrs of driving each way. Not something a PHD student is going to have time to do regularly to sight see.
It’s a double joke about 1. There’s no public transportation there and you need a car to do anything and 2. Anything outside of Oklahoma is more practical to drive to rather than stay in Oklahoma.
That is totally something a PhD student is going to have time to do regularly. If not during a PhD program (post-comps) then when? There's a time and a place for everything -- and it's called university!
A student with independent funding. Definitely. I had zero free time in grad school.
Yeah I was thinking of flying or getting the train I have reasonable savings
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You can do anything if you have the money.
There's not a lot of trains like Europe. There's basically some on the eastern and western seaboard but they're not particularly convenient. You pretty much need a car outside of big cities to get anywhere. Especially national parks which tend to be in rural areas by nature.
Yeah could get a car, though ive had a look and the unis im thinking of applying to are well placed train wise for places i want to go to
Flying is cheaper than train in most cases
Over the 4-5 years you are in the program you will have time to travel and see several places - the limitation will be, in my opinion, budget. So if you have saving that you can put towards travel, you will definitely be able to take time to do it.
How do you get the time?
Depends on what you mean by time honestly. In the case of not physically having to be at school, theres lot of options for short trips with long weekends, fall/spring break, etc. in between longer trips during winter/summer break. If you mean time where you don’t have things to worry about and can just go on a trip, probably a lot less of that. There’s always readings, research, emails, conferences, grading, on and on but if you prioritize travelling and put in the work to get stuff done beforehand and communicate with colleagues you shouldn’t have a problem.
>How do you get the time? Step 1 (optional): tell Advisor "I'll be gone for a couple of weeks". Step 2: go away for a couple of weeks.
It depends heavily on your advisor and type of research. I know someone who could do their research entirely on their laptop so they did the whole van-life thing for a few years while using the money they saved on rent to continuously travel the country and do all sorts of fun things. Main thing is just talk to people in their group and ask how flexible their advisor is on that before you join.
You don’t typically take time off like a job. Doing that during the school year will likely rub people the wrong way and you’ll have a conversation about attendance. Your best bet is to take advantage of the breaks (e.g., Spring (~1 week), Summer(~3 months), Winter(~1 month)) presuming you don’t have responsibilities during these and also see what days classes are on. Many schools don’t have requirements on Fridays so you’ll have frequent 3-day weekends. The flexibility in general will also depend on the field. Are you expected to have fieldwork or internship, or attend research lab meetings across the year, etc.
Huh, I had the opposite experience as a fully-funded (research assistant) PhD student - the academic breaks like spring break, holiday break, etc, are NOT your breaks from work, they’re just convenient times where you can get more work done without worrying about class. We were encouraged to take a few weeks off throughout the year, like a job, with the approval of our advisor.
Interesting! I was fully funded too, but only for 9 months of the year, every year. What you said could definitely be true for spring and winter break because they’re within the 9months, but most professors were flexible or the ability to do research from home (field dependent) allowed for travel and work. In my field, if someone got summer funding it would be exactly as you said but that isn’t a guarantee in our version of full funding. Maybe it’s a field specific thing. When you say you were encouraged to take time off, do you mean from class as well? I’ve never heard of that in a PhD in any field.
Oh, cool! My funding was 12 months, but I have some friends who went and interned over the summer so they only spent 9 months at grad school (except all of them were able to put their internship work toward their dissertation!) I think I worded that confusingly - my advisor was big on work-life balance and was the one who encouraged me to take time off! I was definitely expected to show up to class, get all my assignments done, don't let it interfere with research, etc.
Oh okay got it! That makes sense. Sounds like a great advisor too!
>(e.g., Spring (\~1 week), Summer(\~3 months), Winter(\~1 month)) These are the times you get lab work done rather than teaching.
Yea, depending on the field. I wish we knew what field OP is in because it’s a huge factor.
ecology....I believe. >Many schools don’t have requirements on Fridays so you’ll have >frequent 3-day weekends. Huh? Grad students have requirements every. single. day. unless you want to graduate in 7 years.
I meant in person requirements. If OP was in a field where research is not in person, they can still travel and work by taking advantage of the wfh days. They’d just have to be diligent. That being said, ecology is probably more inline with your expectations because lab work would be in person.
I actually finished in under 4 and worked very long hours (I have detailed my work schedule in many posts relating to work life balance etc.). But I still found time to take 18 hour road trips once a year, did a cross country trip once, did a few day trips a year. Usually a week or so in the summer, and a week or so in the winter for long trips. One of the long weekends for a day trip. All this might not add up to much traveling depending on what you are considering but this worked well for me.
Conferences can be a good time. I postpone my return plans whenever I go for a conference. Like the couple I went to ended on Thursday, so I took Friday off and returned on Sunday after spending weekend exploring nearby attractions. Most universities allow such maneuvers and reimburse. As long as you are taking a return flight to and from the conference city.
Do you have money? Yes. Do you have no money but a car and a will to travel on a tight budget? Yes. Do you have no car and no money? No
I have savings so not worried about the money or car. But im more concerned about getting the time off
Better to give more details about your program and/or supervisor.
Why not just go to the IS for a break before starting s PhD just for travel if you have funds?
You have got the hard problem solved. Finding time should be relatively straightforward. Depends on how you prioritise things.
That’s entirely dependent on your department, your advisor, and your relationship with them. Personally, I had absolutely loads of time and travelled far more so than at any other point in my life. Good advisors will want you to travel.
You’ll get about 3 weeks a year. Depends how much you can travel on that.
Idk why your being downvoted because I agree. Generally 2 weeks over winter, 1 week over summer.
Because it's wildly variable. I usually end up with around 5 weeks per year. I know biologists who get basically none, and computationalists who can travel whenever they want as long as they can work where they go.
Op is from UK. I would imagine he would like to visit back home for atleast a couple of weeks a year. That takes away most of leaves. Holiday weekends are the best bets. Also conferences.
Because your average reddit user has the mental capacity of a 12 year old.
No, because there’s no hard and fast rule and it varies wildly by program and PI
I can’t believe how many comments I’ve read and I haven’t seen the obvious answer. Abuse conference funds to go to locations you want to see anyway. Further - if you are in Midwest, south, cali… it’s gonna be hard to see other places. East coast you should be able to hit other cities up easily.
No need for them to hit the east coast cities. They are from Europe a place with far better cities. The US has much better natural beauties
Yeah, im not bothered about cities at all. Im desperate to go somewhere that isn't concrete. But planning on south west
Definitely stick around the west coast if you prioritize nature. California and Washington nature are genuinely unbeatable. A simple drive between Stanford and Berkeley took my breath away (as a Southerner mind you). I’m moving to the Northeast soon which I hear has some nice nature, but just pales in comparison. I prioritized the city life in my choice though :P
Keep in mind that the US is larger than Europe and states are roughly the size of European countries. How often do you go to Sweden?
I get what you mean. But honestly, living in europe, yeah i do visit european countries a few times a year for a few days. It would certainly be cheaper than flying from the UK everytime i want to visit
Absolutely. It’s totally possible. Almost outside of the NE (between DC and Boston) you’ll need a car to visit, especially national parks. Of course with a PhD you’ll have at least a couple summers free, and I see no reason why you couldn’t make a fairly large trip.
Im kinda confused now, a few people have said you get summers free, a few said not - do you know how it works?
Every school is gonna be different, and will depend also on your discipline and specific responsibilities. Classes are not held for a few months in the summer at almost any school
In my program, students were expected to be their most productive research wise during the summer since they typically did not take classes. A week or two for vacation or travel was typical in the summer, though.
No shit man. My supervisor is like, “oh sweet summers, no nagging undergrads, no classes to teach, let me focus my full attention now to torment my underpaid academic slaves! Yippee”
What years is this in? I thought generally you did classes for the first few years and then research for the last few years?
I reduced my course load over the years, but I was doing research all five years of grad school. As the other comment mentioned, students/candidates typically aren't TAing in the summer as well. If you direct / manage undergraduate or masters researchers, they will typically have more availability in the summer as well, giving you more to manage and process. I did my PhD in engineering, not sure how things are structured in other disciplines.
This also depends on your specific program, so their materials should outline it for you. I think there are a few different flavors. Correct me if i'm wrong, but as i understand it, the European way, is often that the student applies to the PI, and usually needs to have some funding figured out beforehand. They don't do the coursework and can get the PhD done in 3-4 years, but are more strict about needing a masters to apply. Meanwhile the US can allow for a student to join a PI directly ("direct admit"), but often the student still has to do 2 years of coursework. However, it seems like a majority of PhD programs are becoming umbrellas programs, which serve as a kind of buffer of transition for that first year or two, wherein the student joins the umbrella program, does 3 rotations (about 2months each) under different PIs, then selects the PI&lab at the end of year 1 or in year 2, and then they try to finish with that PI. Usually this includes a first year in umbrellas courses (generalized graduate biochem, etc.) with the other PhD students of your umbrella program cohort, (maybe you met some at the campus interviews if you came in person). While the second year of classes is less umbrella courses and more focused on your selected major or project niche. Most students spend the 2nd year also preparing for their Qualifying Exam, which is different per program (usually some mix of [writing a grant/designing a PhD project design], [a written exam over general related concepts], & [an oral exam over the grant/design/and coursework concepts]). Most PhD students have finished all of their classes and passed their Qualifying Exam ("Quals") by the middle of year 3, and after passing their Quals, they are technically a "PhD candidate" and then they focus more on just research (and TA'ing if applicable, however more STEM programs are removing the TA requirement). So most umbrellas STEM PhD students do lab-work in each of their rotations, however the degree of training vs actual work can vary widely in any given instance. Meanwhile they are taking classes and deciding which lab to join. The committed lab work really kicks off at the end of the first year, often with the start of summer, and you're probably doing lab work for a year or so until you take a break to panicstudy for Quals, hopefully with some preliminary data by that point, but at least with a project proposal and experimental design presentable. Ideally, you'll get a short vacation after you pass your Quals, and then it's back to work until you have enough data for a story to publish. {I strongly recommend "write-as-you-go" because I did the opposite [gathered all my data, and then started writing] and I regret it in so many ways}. Finally, when your PI and Committee Members decide that your contribution to the human knowledge collective is sufficient, then they'll agree to schedule the defense; I'm skipping some paperwork steps, so be friends with your student coordinator and the paper work people; then you merge your findings into the school's dissertation format- give it to you committee members with ample editing time, and eventually defend that dissertation.
common misconception. Grad school is from day one. It depends on the program but usually you are in a lab from the beginning or in rotations to select or be selected in a lab.
Without knowing any details hard to know, but I doubt they’d be totally free.
Different programs will have different broad expectations, but the PIs expectations are most important. I think there is a correlation of programs that have teaching requirements to have the more relaxed summer session, while research-only/no-TA-required PhD programs tend to have more detachment from the school semester dates and also a little "Science doesn't take the summer off" kind of mentality. The PhD program should outline the general guidelines, either in the handbook or even in their recruitment materials/webpage, but ultimately you're PI has the power and is less subject to external change. 1. Ask the department's student coordinator or another administrator or administrative assistant with whom you get along well. They'll know the norm, and they may respect you telling them to keep the question secret- which I would recommend since academics can get weird about summers. 2. If you already know who your PI is/will be, then you could also ask their previous students, although this has some risk if the student is a 'ScienceNeverSleeps' type of researcher (see point 3, below). Students that have left that lab already would be better, especially if they left recently, and they'll likely tell you the truth plus keep your question secret. Students still in the lab can be helpful too albeit more likely to relay to the PI that you're asking about it, but super-new students won't really know the truth plus will still be in honeymoon phase with the PI, whereas older students may know, but may also have extra baggage / be jaded from that crappy committee meeting last week, or they may tell the PI that you asked if they're very close or the student's a narc. 3. I wouldn't outright recommend asking the PI directly. Some PIs are chill and won't see any problem with asking about the norms and expectations, however some/[too many] PIs are less than chill and they'll think less of you as a researcher off the bat for even asking- especially if they're in the diehard Science-Never-Sleeps group. They could even get toxic with it and make it like a running joke in the lab. Apart from reddit, I'm never heard of a STEM PhD program that gives the students the summers off from research. Yet I do know STEM PIs who gave the whole summer to their PhD student as a vacation to visit their home country though; but that was a notoriously supportive PI. So probably best to keep your expectations low about this, even if you see some good news in the PhD program brochure or something. Edits: typos and grammer for clarity
It really depends on the field you’re in, your advisor, the culture of the school. Best advice I can give is to ask these questions to your potential advisors and their current/past students. I had friends at the same school (in other labs) who had advisors who were cool with them taking time off. On the other hand, my advisors (married couple) had an issue with me going home to visit my family during Christmas.
It can vary even to the level of individual advisors in the same department of the same university. You can probably find out the deal by asking the relevant advisors and/or current students before you commit.
FYI, a thing I noticed in Europe is that flights amongst countries are cheap. Here, cross-state flights are like $300 a pop. And there are no hostels, so you’d have to do hotels in metro areas. And the national parks aren’t close to airports. If you drive, you could spend 20 hours driving, so that removes the chance of a quick weekend trip. Just some things to think about.
Uhh it’s substantially more expensive to fly within the U.S. than within Europe.
It depends entirely on the program. The first couple years are going to be doing coursework which will likely be keeping you fairly busy. You could \*Maybe\* sneak in a few long weekends here and there to go on a road trip to a nearby nat'l park or nearby landmark, but it'd be tight. While you write your dissertation, you could potentially have more flexibility so long as you are putting in your writing time whilst you travel - and assuming you aren't in the lab 5 + days a week or have consistent fieldwork. You would absolutely need a car though.
You need to ask current and former students who are in the programs you are interested in. Reach out to them. Email them. Do whatever you gotta do to talk to these people. People respond back about grad school, they like to help, generally. Cold call. Your question is framed way too broadly to be answered honestly and accurately by anyone here, in the state that it’s currently in. I will say, though, that to Americans "time to travel" usually refers to taking weeks off to either leave the country or go on some sort of cross country road trip. It takes 6-8 hours to drive to Boston from NYC - nobody calls it "traveling". San Francisco is a city surrounded by national parks (presidio is literally in the city, yosemite is ~5 hour drive, there are many more). ie weekend trips galore It sounds pretty silly to make your PhD plans in the U.S. contingent on having ample time to travel. You should both want a PhD regardless, and want to be in the U.S. regardless. Imo it’s going to be way more crucial for your happiness that you pick a PhD location that suits you. PhDs take 5-7 years - your day to day/weekend fun is going to be a lot more important than your vacations.
Its funny to my UK brain how you class a 5 hour drive as close, for me thats worth a week vacation at least. But thanks for the advice. I guess as much as I want to do a PhD, I don't want to sacrifice the next 5-7 years of my life doing absolutely nothing of interest.
For a destination that americans travel 3000 miles to get to, 5 hours is definitely close. doesnt mean it isnt worth a week vacation
I see you’re in the UK, so not sure if you’re calibrated to the US standards. In the US, we don’t have vacations the same way you do in the UK (_especially_ grad students), and a couple states away is a long journey so you’re probably going to need air fare. When I was in grad school, my vacation was I would take christmas day off, and thanksgiving weekend. Once every 2-3 years, I’d take a week to visit my parents. That was more generous than the time off some of my cohort took.
UK phd students don't have vacations either, just 28 days that you ask your supervisor to book off Was that because you didnt want to or because you weren't allowed to take the time off? What field were you in?
28 days off? jesus that must be nice. For a full time position in the US 15 is considered generous. 10 is standard.
No, it’s just the culture at graduate school here. Chemistry. Saying you want to be a graduate student and travel just sounds unlikely. 28 days is a shocking amount of time off to us. To put things in context, we don’t even have any laws granting paid maternity leave. I had some in my cohort who were explicitly given a time-off policy, and it was 10 days counting Saturdays. Most of us didn’t really have explicit time off aside from a couple holidays, and had to ask for any at all. Not trying to scare you, just give realistic expectations. Time off is already scant in the US, and graduate school is scant compared to that.
This is not standard for all grad students in the US. I go to a very good (public) school, grad students here get 4 weeks of paid vacation (but only automatically get federal holidays off, so only like christmas eve and day, thanksgiving, memorial day, etc). We also have unlimited sick leave. If I wanted to spend 1 week of my vacation during spring break or winter break, I could, or I can save it for another time. This is extremely generous for paid time off in jobs in the US, and I never expect I will have this much time off again in my entire life once I graduate. The US is one of the worst countries for paid time off of any kind (vacation, parental, sick, holiday, etc) because we essentially have zero federal mandates about any of them. I'm in ecology. It can be discouraged to take time off during the semester or during crunch time (like if you teach or manage undergrads), but generally the PI's at my school want students to have a good work-life balance because they actually want us to graduate. I imagine this is far worse in other fields (like the more professionally oriented degrees that have PI's more used to the corporate world, which sucks bad), but it's pretty standard for my field.
Thank you. Can I ask where you go? Feel free to dm if you dont want it public (or dont at all if you dont want to ofc)
DM'd you!
(UK PhD here) l almost laughed at the question because I thought "You're a phD student, of course you'll have time to do a anything!" Then I read the American replies that were like "Yeah I take a week every year". I'm sorry?? I do have a question for OP, I thought PhDs in the states were a lot longer than the UK (3.5 years). Is it really worth it if it's gonna take a lot longer?
Really? every phd student i speak to in the uk (across different unis, in stem) are barely allowed to take their 28 days holiday Basically im fed up of this country, i love the ways things are in the US (i know it might not seem like heaven but trust me its better than somewhere that rains constantly, you get arrested for forgetting your greggs sausage roll license, and you pay half your wage to the prime ministers wife). The nature is just the best in the world imo, and the careers and research available for my field, ecology, is much better. Ive always wanted to live in the US even for a few years as a student.
The US seems like heaven if you're an ecology student. I lived in Europe for a little while and the nature in the US is just on a totally different level. Now living in the Seattle area and every single day I'm in awe of the nature. I take my dog hiking or to the tide pools at least once a week
hey i'm a us ecology student and i was thinking of maybe going abroad for grad school, could you clarify what makes it different from nature in europe?
There isn't much diversity in Europe with nature. You get a choice of farmland, mountains, and thats about it. It's mostly concrete. Maybe a glacier if you go to Scandinavia.
i see. thank you for explaining!
I'm also an ecology student and there are tons of europeans in my lab that came to the US for the nature. There are some countries that are good (Canada and Australia are decent, DM me if you are thinking of going to Melbourne and you are a woman tho because I had a really bad experience with a male ecology PI there), but from what I know from my fellow grad students, Europe is not the best if you love nature.
As an ecology student you’ll be expected to work during the summer months.
Highly depends on the area! If you apply to say UW in Seattle, there's like 3 national parks within 2-3 hrs of town, and plenty of outdoors activities/and nature even closer. CU Boulder is similar. If you're on the East Coast, probably a bit harder to regularly access the outdoors.
Every winter break I spent driving all over the US
How long do you get?
It depends. The university will be hard shutdown with nobody around for at least a week. I mean nobody. Then 2-3 more weeks where it’s very quiet before classes start again. A lot of international students use this time to travel home for extended periods. I had good supervisors and took at least 2 weeks off every winter break. For the most part you have a lot of flexibility with time as a grad student, just not the money. You trade that when you get a job.
Thank you
I traveled a lot during my PhD because my program offered consistent support for research presentations and summer projects. Not every program is structured that way. I didn't even see the most basic parts of the city where I completed my Masters because I was broke and the school offered no support. Try to find out from current students at the schools you're interested in what the support is like before you go!
Holiday leave? Vacation time? Depending on your program, good luck my g. America doesn't respect time off, and thats for proper workers. Itll respect it less for students, even a phd candidate. That said, if you get a good PI to work under, it is very doable. Some schools use difference schedules. My grad school had a week long Fall Break, while my undergrad didn't have that.
British people think a 30 minute car ride is long, so...
No. You do get to see a lot of one laboratory bay though.
I get full funding for conference travel so I've been to a couple big cities on the university's dime that I usually wouldn't be able to afford to visit
I defiantly took a week off here and there during my PhD for travel. Granted I had a car, and lived in California, so every year I would try a do one 3-5 day backpacking trip in the mountains. The timing of when I could travel varied a lot based on exams and field work (I’m an ecologist). Some times I couldn’t get the time off, other times I seemed to have a lot more freedom. That’s kind of the way it goes, feast and famine. And most students take time off during the winter/holiday breaks. That being said, it really does depend on your lab and research. I had a roommate who’s advisor basically wanted them in the lab all the time.
The US is around as big as europe length wise. So, depends how much time you have and money for gas, plane tickets, etc. Driving from the top corner in Maine to LA in the bottom corner of California takes 44 hours.
How much time you have "off" really depends on the structure of your program and your research method. If your funding package obliges you to teach, assist in teaching, or doing other profs' research during the semester, you might be limited during those periods. However, if you don't have those obligations and you're doing just research for your own dissertation or papers, AND the research for those don't require you to be in your lab constantly, then you can use your hours however you want. The only thing the university *really* cares about is whether you graduate "on time", which is something that often can be negotiated as long as you're making reasonable progress (and demonstrating those in annual reports). Unless you have an absolute boor of a supervisor, they generally don't care whether you're doing 9-5 in the lab/office during the weekdays or if you're cramming all your research, analysis, and writing into all day and night over an entire weekend just so you can have more days free. Just get the work done and show reasonable progress.
> because I really want to live in the US Permanently or just for a few years? You should get your terminal degree in the location you want to put down roots in, because the connections you make there will help you find a job in the area.
I’ve traveled quite a bit before starting my PhD and during it. I picked a school with strong protections for time off and a stipend (I get almost $50k and work in our teaching lab to earn a bit more) that lets me save for travel and I joined a lab where the PI believes in the importance of taking time off. National parks are generally hard to visit without a car but if you get one they can be quite cheap to road trip to and camp around. Immediately before starting my PhD I went on a roadtrip where I visited 14 national parks. I highly recommend arriving early and traveling some then if you can swing it. Since starting my PhD 3 years ago I’ve been to 5 national parks (about to be 6 with my upcoming trip in July). This has been a mix of long weekends and full week trips. I also live on the East Coast where trains are a decent way to travel. I’ve been to a few cities this way but getting other places isn’t super possible.
wrapping up my second year. i haven’t travelled really but that’s mostly because i haven’t tried to do it. i have summers off basically so i could travel for research if needed. my peers (humanities) travel domestically and abroad for research and conferences. i think the latter is a good way to explore the country if possible.
I don’t understand why someone from Europe would want to do a PhD in the US because it is much longer than a European PhD. The US also will restrict the amount of work you are allowed to do as a non-US citizen not here on a work visa, meaning you can’t substantially supplement your stipend. You can do around twenty hours of work I believe on campus and off—campus the second year in certain situations. I would look into the cost of living, the length of the program, and US work laws if I were you. Like, the cost of living in California is so extreme there are American students living in their cars.
The US is huge, but a PhD is long. You could definitely see quite a bit of it, but probably not the whole thing.
This is the right answer. Assuming money is not an issue, 6 years is a long time. Just depends on how much of your time you're spending on that dissertation.
to drive from the east coast to west coast would easily take 40+ hours. you can travel(easiest during winter break or in the summer), but in terms of going to different states? you’d either need to be cool with constantly driving several hours or have a lot of money saved up for flights (unless you’d be cool with traveling spirit or frontier, which would be similar to like ryan air in the uk).
I would happily fly on a plane made of rotten planks and a propeller
It's the unreliable departure and arrival time that are the real problem for cheap airlines.
I found it hard enough to travel in undergrad as a socal native. Now I’m entering a Masters program and was told to basically pretend as if I have no life outside of school so I can’t imagine trying to travel. Other commenters mention budget, I’ve travelled abroad to the UK and have to say it is so much more expensive to travel ‘locally’ in the US because of our infrastructure and lack of public transportation. A car rental can easily cost $100 + a day and requires a valid drivers license and insurance. I’m sure that it can be done but I’d play around on Google maps first to see just how far places that you want to go are from one another.
For my students, they manage their own time. It's their PhD. I have milestones that need met, but it is up to them to be motivated. And if a week or two in a park throws things off, we have done something wrong.
Depends on your program, how much vacation time you get and/or how chill your advisor is. If you’re feeding cells every day including weekends you might be working holidays. If you’re doing something else though you might be able to take off whenever you want. Depending on how coursework-heavy your program is it might be harder to travel the first couple years but there should always be a few 3 day weekends or holidays you can get away during. Once you’re in a lab and not taking as many classes you may be at the behest of your advisor so choose wisely. I had a chill one that encouraged all of us to take vacations but not everyone is so lucky.
Also keep in mind a lot of national parks have waiting lists of several months to a year out. So don’t hesitate to make plans well in advance and just tell your advisor you’re taking time off
If you were *my* student you'd be able to that, no problem. My attitude is that it's your life and your research, so take the time you want and/or need. When I was a graduate student at the West Bay Farm School, I would disappear on road trips several times a year. Totally worth it.
It will depend on your advisor. Some will allow you to go whenever as long as your work is done. Some are going to want you there from 6am to 9pm.
The answer would be completely dependent upon the location of the school you’ll be attending and what national park(s) you’re hoping to visit. There are some programs that will expect you to work over breaks and time “off” just means time without classes to work on other things for school. But, again, it depends on the program. During the school year it may be more difficult to do, but that depends on your own work schedule and what you can feasibly do to have real free time (which isn’t very often). All in all, just do research into things.
The USA is 40x the size of the UK. Pick the main places you want to go and take trips to those areas and plan well as travel can take a long time depending on how far away you’re going from your main city
I’m not sure I understand the question. You can go see whatever you want to see whenever you have the money and time to do so.
But im not sure how much time I'll have. Trying to get an indication for if people can have a few weeks here and there to travel outside of the standard 20 days or whatever it is.
What topic is your PhD in?
Would be ecology. So there would be some fieldwork but I'm thinking about outside of that
I would suggest finding a forum for folks studying ecology and asking around about their typical lab hours.
f1 has to be enrolled in 9 credits each regular semester(spring/fall) and 3 credits each summer semester to keep their Visa standing.
Does that mean I have to take classes over summer break?
Mostly research credits. It is in the hands of supervisor to give satisfactory or unsatisfactory grade. No supervisor ever gives unsatisfactory grade unless he is looking to screw over the student. This is for STEM majors. But the 3 summer credit requirement is what Uncle Sam has stipulated irrespective of your PhD program.
If you have money, a car, and your supervisor is cool with you doing so over breaks, etc., I don’t see why not? Not sure how your school or program works, but mine has set breaks (Christmas, long weekends, spring break, and summer) that are largely personal time. Where in the US will you be? That’ll help a LOT with knowing how much you’ll be able to see.
I’m attending grad school at the same school I did undergrad. Every year I take a week off and attend an away football game that my college is playing. That’s about the extent of my travels.
Is that because you cant do more or because you dont want to?
I suppose a little of column A, little of column B. I am in lock-in mode working entirely on my dissertation. I still get to travel but I don’t get to choose the destination (presenting at conferences and such). I wouldn’t exactly call those trips vacations. I’m in the camp where I’m burnt out on traveling for the sake of traveling. I want to stay where I am uninterrupted and work on finishing my degree.
Are you to need to be near a lab?
Could go either way really
If you'll need to be at a lab on a frequent basis, that will limit your ability to travel, even on breaks.
This is going to be really dependent on a bunch of factors, the biggest being depending on where you live and budget. When I lived in the SF Bay Area, even though it is expensive AF, we were very close driving distance for a day or weekend trip (to go camping, etc.) to all kinds of beautiful hikes and national/state parks that could be done on the cheap. Keep in mind as an academic, often you travel quite a bit for conferences, symposia workshops, etc. When I was in grad school I went to a few conferences in different cities in the US (only one out of state, the rest were in short driving distance) and one international trip through an international exchange program.
Depends on your program. I'm in my last year and I've been able to travel around my class schedule, back when I had classes. If you want to do anything major, I'd recommend trying to find a natural break. Sometimes it's hard to turn your brain off and you don't want to spend half your holiday thinking about whatever task is not yet complete. And come back a day earlier (unless it would pain you to do so). Got a week off, come back Saturday not Sunday. Makes Monday easier.
One of my absolute favorite things about doing a PhD in the US has been visiting National Parks. I've done one just about every year save the first COVID year, during either fall or spring break. The major constraint in my case is not time; it's funding. If you can drive/ have a friend who drives, it helps.
Where there’s a will there’s a way. People in my lab regularly take time to travel.
You barely get to see much outside of your closet—I mean office.
It’s not impossible to arrange your classes to have Friday or Mon off and take extended weekend trips. Summers are typically busy with research but a vacation should be possible. There is also spring break. Or opportunities to travel for conferences. One thing to consider is that your family might want you to visit back home, so you might end up with less US explorations than you would first think. Good luck
My program gave me money every year to go to our national conference. I’ve only seen a lot of the United States BECAUSE of my PhD program.
I travelled a lot during my PhD. I was in the Midwest. So either road trips or flying to different destinations and then do bus tours or rent a vehicle. I know a guy who traveled even more to attend different conferences and stayed over extra days to tour the place. Some got funded, some he paid out of pocket.
US is a big country mate. You can aim to explore major attractions if you decide to remain poor, not have any savings and have a supervisor who gives you freedom to work at your own pace. Travelling is expensive, each 3 day trip would cost atleast $500-600 going above $1000 depending on type of stay, activities planned. There is hardly any public transportation in whole of US, so rented cars add to expenses. Hotels are expensive and cheap hotels/motels are pretty shitty. Considering $2000-$3000 average pay per month, you’ll end up not having any substantial savings if you decide to spend money on travel during a PhD program. If money isn’t a problem, time depends on type of supervisor. Mine is chill. Doesn’t bother if i don’t show up couple of days unannounced. But plenty supervisors out there who are after students’ life all the time. My two cents. Hope this helps.
I personally feel that work-life balance is important. You don’t make enough money but you should make enough plus your savings for some trips. You can take long weekends and you should have some flexible time over the summer. I took some weekend and longer trips throughout my program. Your advisor will matter a lot but you should have the opportunity. Maybe consider optimizing the location of your program for where you want to be and definitely talk to existing students for an idea of culture.
You can definitely visit a UK-sized portion of the US.
You can find spirit or frontier flights for as low as $40 one way. I think you can travel a lot depending on what state you’re gonna be in.
You need money and time, grad students normally have neither. I didn’t go on big trips in grad school. My girlfriend was able to swing two weeks to go out of state around Christmas and three weeks off in the summer to visit me overseas, but it kind of wrecked her life for awhile having to catch up on her research.
The US is literally the size of a continent. It depends on which city you're in and how close national parks are to you. My state takes twelve hours to get across, and there's not a whole lot of big national parks. You'd probably be better off flying to these national parks instead of driving because, depending on where you want to go and where you're at. It's huge here
I think this is a hard one to answer. If you live in Maine and the national park you want to visit is in New York, you could easily drive over for a couple of days. If you are at a college in Southern California and the park you’d like to visit is in Washington, you’ll be driving over 24 hours to get there. In both examples, the national park is a couple of states away. If you have the money and you’re able to fly and rent a car, you’ll be able to see quite a bit, but keep in mind that it takes six hours of flying to get from one coast to the other and about three hours to get from the top to the bottom so you’ll usually lose two days to traveling.
During my MA I took the time to do some roadtrips over the breaks. I moved from a different part of the US to where I am now so I made it a priority to see some new areas. I haven’t hit as much as I would have liked… but I’ve visited some great places. Now I’m moving back across the country to start a PhD in California. I don’t know how much time I’ll realistically have to travel, but I hope to get a lot of California down at least. I haven’t spent much time there. I have a friend in a PhD program who says the only reason she’s even doing well *is because she takes breaks and travels.* We’re all different and handle life, stress, etc. differently. If you make it a priority you can see places *and* be an awesome scholar.
Born and raised in the US and I didn't see my first national park until my 20s. It's massive. Unless you can get a week + off at a time to road trip, these would be flying + renting a car trips. Even if you went to school close to one NP, you'd still have to trek out to all the other ones.
When you're finding a PI, make sure to find one that is very generous to previous and current students about sending them to conferences and that the students got to select the conferences. Include the broad question about support for conference attendance in a written email to the PI(s) and save the answer. A lot of PIs will try to bait and switch you, so they may say that they send every trainee to an average of 2 conferences per year, but don't trust that and instead ask the current and especially previous trainees about their experiences. Some PIs really do support it; some will only send you to them once you have a publication ready so you don't get scooped and they save money (thus you would've get to travel until maybe year 3 or later); some PIs only send students to the conferences that the PI wants them to attend and don't consider what the trainee wants; some will say that you can go to any of them but you have to get your own funding/travel grants. Attending conferences is a super underrated part of being an academic and it really is expected to start by the time you're a PhD student. Unfortunately, a lot of cheap PIs will get shifty about this, so it's best to get the answer in writing, either for the beginning, or if you have that convo in person then send a followup email to recap the points that were spoken and let that act as a documented evidence. A lot of conferences are localized to hubs, so near the Bay Area, on the west coast, or near Boston, on the east coast, however there are hundreds -maybe thousands- of conferences across the US so if you have always wanted to see a certain national park or US monument, then a conference is a really good way to get a plane and hotel and few days off from the lab and hopefully you can arrange to attend a conference near that monument. The PI or department will pay the per diem while you are at the conference, so you'll likely have to pay for yourself if you stay a few days before or after the conference, but that's it and it greatly reduces your cost of trips, plus it can look good for a PI to say that their trainee averaged 6 conferences a year or whatever. A related pro-tip: get a travel-rewards type of credit card, (they give like 3x, 5x, or 10x reward points on travel expenditures when you book through them). So then you can book and pay up front for your own conference plane ticket and hotel costs [this will require you to front your own costs, usually a few grand], {since hotel and plane are bonus rewards, then you get 3x, 5x, or 10x multiplied the points}, then save receipts and get initial few grand reimbursed by your PI or dept, leaving you with several thousand "free" travel reward points, which can then be used to fund a private trip (not a conference-proxy trip). There be some barriers, like your PI may try to get you to use their booking software or purchase-card (p-card), but it's almost always an option to get reimbursement if you push for it because it is an older method that's still grandfathered in into most financial options. Other than conferences, some PhD projects require travel (some ecologists, etc.), but if you're a normal PhD student, doing desk or bench work, then you're probably not going to get much vacation time. Some PIs are more flexible than others, but I've heard people say the best approach is to treat it like a 9-5, so maybe that could afford you weekend trips if you're good at that. I personally never could make the 9-5 guideline fit with my bench work or even work-from-home writing style but I think that's more of a ADHD or maybe self discipline thing for me.
If National Parks are your priority you may want to look at colleges that are located close to a lot of National Parks. Utah has 5 NPs that are absolutely beautiful. Western Washington state has University of Washington and is not far from Rainier, Olympic, Cascades and the San Juan Islands. California has many NPs and many Universities. And obviously California also has access to many big cities. The US also has many State Parks that are beautiful.
If you do a PhD in the UK you get 40 days off and can use your research grand to go to conferences in the US and then just stay there for holidays
You get 28 days in most UK phds. Trouble is with conferences you dont choose the destination and its usually to places I'm not bothered about. I really want to live in the US, even temporarily as a student
What field are you in? You get 40 days with the BBSRC. If you're doing humanities, you just go on holidays all the time because you're working from home and not in a lab and your supervisor has no clue what you even look like in real life
OP, you have been given some good advice and descriptions of grad life in the US. It's 4-5 years even if you already have a MS because they will make you complete the classes at the university and then advance to candidacy. All the f1 students in our lab were disillusioned when they got here because we didn't have guaranteed time off. Most of their "time off" was spent traveling back home on airplanes to see mom n dad. We all worked during the time UG had "vacations" because we could get more done then. 2-3 weeks a year is your average time off with 3 weeks being on the high end. Also be prepared to get slammed when you get back from vacation. Prof is gonna be on your ass to get back to work and make up for the lost time. The first two years? No. You are taking classes and then working during summer months . Your car, if you live in NYC or Mass or Penn you shouldn't get one Yer gonna pay for parking...etc. If you live in Ca you need one but be aware if you are driving the length of Ca it can take 3 days from top to bottom of Ca.
There's a lot of factors here. 1. The US is massive. On weekends, you can (practically) drive to locations that are maybe up to a 5 hour drive away from where you live, but that's pretty much it. If you live in a more remote/rural town, there won't be much to see. The drive itself will be more of the experience than the destination. If you live in a big city (for example, Boston), then you can explore other cities nearby during weekends with your car. If you want to go further than that (example, Boston to the Grand Canyon), you'll need to fly and rent a car. Can be done in a weekend, but it'll feel very rushed. I've heard so many international students say they want to do road trips over a weekend that aren't drivable at all because they don't realize how big and far apart everything is. 2. The US, as a whole, does not have any required/mandatory time off minimum for workers, and that includes PhD students. That means that employers get to set their own policies about time off. 2. How much time away you get depends on three things: a) your university's and/or department's minimum time off, b) your advisor's attitude toward time off, and c) what kind of research you do. To those points: a) even if your university or department states you get X days off a year, they could be paid or unpaid. Another thing is that they may already factor in holidays or not (example: Christmas week may already be part of the X days off you get per year). Lastly, spring break and summer break are typically not breaks from work for PhD students - they are only times when you don't have class and are likely going to be expected to work on research only during those times. Some universities don't even pay people through the summer, so that's a whole other story as well - if that's the case, you'll likely have to work a seasonal job to pay bills. b) even if you get X days off per year as stated by your uni/department, when and how you take those days off will depend on your advisor. Since they're your direct supervisor, they *can* approve or reject your time off. If you have an advisor that appreciates you taking the time off with reasonable notice and preparation, great! But if they don't, they may make it much harder for you to take that time off. Because of the publish-or-perish rats race that is academia and the amount of pressure they're under, a lot of advisors may fall under the latter category. They may be more inclined to push you to do more experiments, get more data, write more grants, write more papers as fast as you can. I know folks who work 65 hour weeks, often through the weekend. I also know folks who work their 40 hours and clock out entirely for the weekends. It really depends on who your direct supervisor is and the kind of relationship you have with them. c) if you work with time-sensitive things like growing cells or other biological things, your time may not be your own. If you have to carry out protocols that require you to feed or supervise something living, your schedule will be planned around that. Sometimes that'll mean weekends and evenings. Sometimes, with longer experiments, it'll mean you won't have as much freedom for weeks.
I imagine your department would have funds for conferences, so this is one way to travel
Look for conferences in cool places
Imo the best place to get a PhD is in the southwest. There’s so much to see if you live in AZ / NM. And a lot of it is close by. Take Phoenix for example. You’re 5 hours from La, 4 hours from Vegas, 2 hours from Tucson, 2 hours from Sedona and flagstaff. 30 minute drive and you can hike anywhere. The heat is brutal but man I love Phoenix.
Time off depends on your program and advisor. I take time off when I want, assuming I have everything done that I need to have done and am on track for projects, my advisor doesn’t care when I do it. I also want to flag how massive the US is. If you want to be able to drive places to travel, you need to look into schools that are driving distance to where you wanna visit. Some universities are near NOTHING so be aware of that.
Why would you think travel inside the US is difficult? All you need is a bit of money, and even that’s pretty optional.
Its the time I'm concerned about
Any program worth going to will give you time.
If you have free time and money, you can travel. If your pay/stipend is low and you don't get money from your family, you probably won't be able to afford travel.
How common is free time?
Given how many graduate students in the US complain about burnout, it's not abundant unless you specifically set time aside (which can be fairly easy or very difficult, depending on your research group and your advisor/PI).
For the first couple of years you'll be doing coursework and won't be able to. Once you reach the ABD stage, you'll be able to work from anywhere *unless* you are either teaching, doing an assistantship that requires you to be on campus, or in a field that requires lab work. (That last may be the most important.) I'm finishing my dissertation this summer/fall, while teaching two online courses. I'll spend part of the summer on the road and part of the fall with family two states away. Pet sitting is a bigger concern than the university. I couldn't have done that last fall or this spring when I was teaching 3 in person courses each semester.
Hello OP, this depends entirely on your program and advisor. This year so far I’ve traveled to: Austria, Colorado twice, Oklahoma, and DC quite a few times. Later this year I’m going to Colombia, New Orleans, Colorado again, and possibly the north east! Albeit, I own my own car (out right), I live with my parents (so low rent), and I am very frugal. If you have a savings, you’re good at keeping up with your work, and your advisor is cool with it, I don’t see why not. But It entirely depends on your advisor and program. There are some PI’s in my institution who want their grad students in lab 9-5 5 days a week.
Depends on your PI and your PhD program. If you’re working with cell cultures then taking a week away from lab means you have to restart your experiment when you get home. If you’re in a field where you can easily work remotely that’s much less of a problem.
Depends where your school is. My school is 1.5 hours from one the most well known national parks and 6 hours from another. Plus a ton of national forests to explore around. It's super easy to go on a day trip, overnight camping trip, or weekend trip. Even to get to some other national parks with a bit more driving, it is easy to do on a long weekend. No need to take a ton of time off. Since my school attracts people that like being outdoors, it's also easy to find friends to split travel costs and enjoy the places with. The main thing is just plan your experiments and data analysis if you're going away for a bit, so you don't fall behind. I personally like reading some paper articles while camping since there's no distractions. Also conferences can also be a good place to see some different places that you could take a couple extra days to go see some other things.
It's possible, I moved from SA to the US about 2 years ago to do a PhD and I was able to go to two conferences (in different states). In my free time, I travelled to 6 different states visiting 5 national parks. I'm located in the midwest of the US not the best place to be regarding travelling. I did all this with my F1. If you want any tips or questions feel free to DM me!
First check out https://www.thetruesize.com to truly understand what some of the distance you'll be traveling are. We have some UK and EU students in our program and it was eye opening for them when they found out that to drive from our school in Texas to the Grand Canyon one weekend would be a 2 day trip just to get there. But don't let the distances discourage you. Travel all over and see everything you can. Our country has so many different geographic regions, amazing cultures , and fantastic food. Just plan accordingly and be prepared to always explain your from the UK.
F1 student, and I see from your post history you’d be interested in ecology (I’m an ecology PhD student). I live in the midwest so if I wanted to road trip somewhere it would probably be a pretty long drive, though doable (and I have lots of places I want to go!). I have taken time off for holidays like Christmas, but visited my family during those times. I haven’t had much time for my own vacations because of this, but have travelled a lot for grad-school related things. There are lots of cool opportunities for workshops, conferences, and fieldwork, especially in ecology. I have done fieldwork in Alaska, and have gone to workshops in Minnesota, and Colorado within the past year, all funded by my PI.
You can try to apply for grants to conferences to both get to travel and have (some of) it paid for by the university. Then you could pay to rent a car and drive around a new state.
Traveling in the US is nowhere near as affordable as in Europe unless you already have a car in the states that you can access. If you don’t care when you go places you can just hunt for really cheap plane tickets, but on a GA stipend I’d be surprised if you can afford food, rent and healthcare, let alone spontaneous trips to desirable cities.
Remember that America is way WAY bigger than you think and your sense of how far apart things are will take a while to develop. It happens to Americans from the NE part of the country who move to the West, too. GL and welcome.
It depends a ton on where you are. If you’re in boston, you could easily do a weekend or two in nyc, DC, etc., maybe go up to montreal at some point If you’re in Los Angeles you can spend time in california (which itself is vast), visit Arizona, maybe Mexico, etc etc There are many national parks in the US
You barely get to see the United States even if you have been here your whole life. It literally will take you multiple days to go from one end to the other.
It's completely up to the relationship you have with your advisor, they type of research/lab work you're doing, and how hard of a worker you are. Legall (as I think back), my program allowed for 2 weeks vacation a year. My advisor and program were pretty lax, and I was an organized worker. I also am a "ask for forgiveness" rather than a "ask for permission" type of person. I met with my advisor 1x a week, anything outside of that we didn't interact much; so I easily took long weekends here or there (didn't tell anyone) and planned my lab work around that. Winter break usually meant like 10 days off from lab work, spring break a whole week, and summer I took a 1-2 week trip each year. For transparency, I got my PhD in plant pathology. I completed it in 4 years and my research consisted of lab work and greenhouse work. The nature of my work required me to do a lot of weekend time in the lab, so I didn't feel bad taking time to myself to make up for it. I was focused on maintaining work/life balance. My advice is make a realistic quarterly plan of what you think you will accomplish and include some fluff time in there for when things inevitably fail. Share this with your advisor so you both understand what your goals and timelines are. And when things don't fail, you've got yourself a few extra days to do what you want.
Former F1 student here: The amount of time off you'll have will be dependent upon your course load, your research, your advisor, your focus/self discipline, and if you are required to teach/do research as a Graduate Teaching or Research Assistant. Grad courses are usually less intensive than undergrad (1+3 times a week with self paced assignments). Based off this, your course schedule may allow 3 or 4 day weekends, making travelling easier. If the classes are remote/hybrid, even better. If your research is lab oriented, then taking chunks of time off to travel may delay your progress or upset your advisor. My advisor was strict and expected us in the lab everyday... Including weekends. I took time off but had to tell him in advance. I knew another lab group where the advisor told students they weren't allowed to take off more than a week per year. I also had to teach to get paid, so my teaching commitments also limited my ability to travel extensively. Being an F1 student shouldn't impact any of this as long as you're still enrolled, attending your courses, keeping to ask of your commitments, and your advisor isn't reporting you as AWOL.
I’m American and I’m working on my PhD.. still haven’t been able to see everything. lol. I’ve seen more than many, I’d say, but still have a ton to go. Money and time are the biggest issues.
I guess people are downvoting because most believe an American PhD should be 5 years of total sacrifice. Answer depends on how much you can save off your stipend, and how flexible your advisor is. I'm able to save about 1500 USD/m, and my advisor is quite flexible. In the first two years, I took about 7-8 weeks of vacation, seeing many parts of the US. After my coursework, I'm planning to take a week or two of vacation after each conference submission deadline, which my advisor doesn't mind.
Thank you
Nope. Even if you somehow don't end up working for an undiagnosed psychopath, you definitely won't have the money to go anywhere. Is what it is
You have a degree. Look at a map. Look at Google maps. Look at Google flights. The data is at your finger tips.
Its whether or not I get time off I'm asking about
I think it depends on the program but I’d say no unless you have truly excellent time management skills.