Expert: Daniel Mazur - 8/25/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi Daniel,
I'm a guy from India and am presently in the last year of my high school. I want to be a theoretical physicist, and i'm not reluctant to work hard for that , but the problem is that it is going to take at least 10 years for me to become a physicist, and for these 10 years i will be practically earning nothing. This is what is worrying me and even after that, as i've heard many people say that a theoretical physicist doesn't get paid much. Please help me with this. Please tell me a way in which i can do good financially too.
Thanks

ANSWER: Hi Shikhin,
threr are two parts to your question. One, the income during studies, and second after earning a PhD. The income during college studies can be facilitated by a scholarship (if you are already very good), study loan (normal in the USA, I know nothing about India) or part time job (almost impossible to cover expenses, if you want to study hard too). The most difficult is getting through the 4 years of undergraduate college, because the scholarship programs are few. Should you consider studying in the USA, I recommend contacting the Fulbright Foundation. They offer one-year scholarships to the USA and it is such a prestigious one that it is fairly straightforward to get funding for the following years while in the States. Every country worth mentioning has its own scholarship programs, so it merely about quickly finding out about them.
As soon as you get to Graduate College (to pursue Masters or PhD), you will get offered so-called assistantships (teaching or research). This is quite automatic, but it is true that your income just about comfortably covers the expenses. I did this at a small U.S. university and ended up at about zero after 5 years of PhD program, but it's true that I did not try too hard to make savings.
If you are serious about becoming a theoretical physicist, I don't think you can plan on earning big. Only if you are lucky (in addition to the hard work) early in your career and make a discovery, you will get soon to over $100000 per year - perhaps within 5 years after PhD. That's a reasonable minimum. Current U.S. average in all physics is about $50k/yr as your starting salary for the first post-doc and it nearly doubles (on average) after 10 years. So that's the baseline, if you are working hard and have a moderate success. That is enough for a decent life, to feed a family or support parents, all in moderation.
As an experimentalist, I have information about theoreticians only second-hand. At my college theoretical physics was really popular together with geophysics, but somehow a lot of the graduates left physics after Masters and went to banking, stock exchange and insurance businesses. There they earn quite a bit more than as physicists, perhaps 2-3 times more I think. But they don't do, what they graduated... I think that if you really want both, you need to sit on two chairs - take a part time in academia to do some research, and another part time as a statistical/mathematical/modeling specialist for some financial institution. Through the finances you can then invest your normal salary surplus to generate more income and if you are successful, these investments will eventually earn you more than any of the jobs and then you will be the high-earning theoretical physicist that you would like to be :-). Well, we all would like to be high earning, don't we?
On the sidelines let me add that apparently if you get your bachelor, master and/or PhD at one of the old and famous U.S. universities (probably true also for Oxford&Cambridge in U.K. and La Sorbonne in France), you are in for perhaps 40% more than average as the startup post-doc salary compared to graduates of other universities. However the tuition at these famous schools is huge and assistantships (i.e. during your studies) tend to be on the small side, so the true benefit is probably less.
I hope this helped you a bit. Write again, should you like to discuss it more.
Daniel

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QUESTION: sorry forgot to include in the previous question. how many years is it exactly goin to take till i reach that 50k mark? by april this year i will have cleared my high school here in india and then ill be givin SAT (the common exam for US universities... you might already know about that) and im goin to apply for an undergrad course. so from now on , how many years will it eaxactly take?  how much do people generally earn over there.. like an upper middle class guy in the US ..how much does he earn?? and then i can compare 50k to it..!!!!
thnx again!!


ANSWER: Hi Shikhin,
let me tell you, how it went with me. In my undergraduate years (4) and Masters years (2) I earned near zero, I was fully supported by my parents back home. Yes, lucky me. Then went to the USA for the PhD program, which took me 5 years. During this time I had an assistantship, which started at full tuition $14k/year and finished at full tuition $18k in my last year. Mind the "full tuition" there, which was perhaps $11k/year. I should tell you, that the F-1 student visa limits your employment allowance to 20 hours per week (while 40  hours is considered full-time). I could, had I really wanted to, take on another part-time job somewhere else, which would be illegal, but the chance of getting caught would be low. I didn't do it, because the even if the research assistant job was half-time, I had to be at the lab full time to get things done (mind you, I had to study and learn and try to write articles and presentations...) I could have also applied for some graduate scholarship, but I was satisfied with what I had and too lazy to spend time with it. Also I found that a lot of scholarships have "american citizenship" as one of the qualifying condition... Finally, 11 years after high school graduation (it could have been only 9, had I been a better student ;-)) I landed my first post-doc job and am earning roughly $55k/year. So, the time to reach $50k mark is about 10 years.
I could also share some rumors with you, you will have to decide, how much to trust them. I had attended a small university (the Illinois Institute of Technology), so the assistantships were average and the post-doc salary is average as well. I heard from my professors there that as a graduate student I was much better off that if I was studying at Harvard, MIT, or other famous universities. They said that students there are frequently exploited - you see, when a student gets so lucky to be at a famous university, they are also much more motivated to stay there and therefore will not complain, if a professor overworks them, if they are not treated fairly etc. It is for a good reason that I wrote to you the first time, graduates from Harvard have significantly higher startup salaries and on average earn more than others for the rest of their lives.
Finally, you'd have to define, what is "upper middle class" to you, what occupations. It very much depends on the country, where you intend to live, because it is not the gross salary that defines your "richness", it is the part of salary that is left to you after subtracting taxes and all the mandatory living expenses, car fuel,... Also the salary scales of different occupations are different in different countries. In USA, the lawyers and medical doctors earn the most, and they are followed by experienced engineers (electronic, civil, biomedical...) working in the industry. Scientists are part of the middle class, but nowhere near the top, because most of theme are in academia and government jobs, which always pay less than the industry. What scientists benefit from, though, is the freedom of choice that we have in studying, whatever interests us. There is always pressure and uncertainty, but we have the possibility to work on problems that really interest us.
Good luck, I hope this is useful to you!
Daniel


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QUESTION: Hi again,
Your previous answer really cleared it all up.Ok, now another question, are astrophysics and theoretical physics related? Like to what extent? If i get a phd in astrophysics, can i still call myself a theoretical physicist? Can i still work on more or less the same things that a theoretical physicist works on? And are career options in astrophysics much better than that in theoretical physics. Basically i'm trying to find another way to the same thing , because many people say that career options in astrophysics are quite good, just like in engineering.

Answer
Hi Shikhin,
and sorry for the delay in my answer. Theoretical physics and astrophysics are terms corresponding to a different point of view at physics. From one point of view we divide physics according to subject of study, that is, *what* is being studied. Here we have fields like astrophysics, particle physics, radiation physics, materials physics, plasma physics, geophysics, meteorology and climatology,... In every one of these one needs someone to collect data (experimentalist), someone to construct models and theories (theoretical physicists) and someone to calculate predictions of the theories (computational physicists). So you see, from another point of view we can divide physics jobs into theoretical, computational and experimental physics.
A graduate physicist always has either theoretical physics or experimental physics as their "forte", and can later specialize in computational physics, because it's part of both graduate curricula.
When you are determined to be a theoretical physicist, you still have a whole universe of subjects to choose from as your point of focus. Astrophysics is one of them, but I must say I have nothing more than a barely educated guess on the jobs in theoretical astrophysics. Which is that I think that all around the world this position is a bit of a luxury for an institution to have. This is simply given by the lack of testable predictions such specialist can make, and therefore it is unlikely that any collaborations, or long-term valuable publications will arise. And as the world spins on money, another big disadvantage is that theoretical astro is so unlikely to have any practical applications... It comes down to realization that such positions are scarce, the competitiveness between scientists holding them is very high, and it all essentially requires you to be nothing less than brilliant. Now, astrophysics has an "experimental" branch too - not that astrophysicists can do experiments, their only experiment is the observable universe, but at least they can collect data. There is enough positions in that field, but it is not your desired theory.
Finally, in terms of specialization, I assure you that you still have 4 years ahead of you before deciding about what you want to be. The undergraduate physics curricula are the same for everyone - except you  can take "extra" courses according to your liking as an undergrad. What you should do in your situation is to search the world schools of physics for those producing good theorists - you can limit yourself to the USA and still it will take some time. It is unfortunately not my field, so I cannot guide you much in that search. Then you find out about their tuition, programs, admission requirements... all that. For your information, when you in 4 years apply for a graduate program, you will need to pass an examination called Graduate Record Examination (GRE). It is like the next level after SATs. I recommend that you try that test (there are practice papers around) to see what you will later face. Higher score will help you to the more prestigious graduate schools, so it pays preparing for it.
Take care, I hope this helps.
Daniel