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How I Earn £50k while doing my PhD
The PhD Dilemma
My PhD experience so far has been one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. Getting to work on my own research in an area I really love and feeling like I’m pushing the boundaries of human knowledge is pretty cool. However, there’s a notorious dilemma that I’m sure every PhD candidate considers before committing to the program: what about the money? Generally, academia is considered to be a pretty gruelling and insecure career unless you’re one of the few tenured professors at the top. Furthermore, if you’re graduating from uni, there are many graduate programs available in industry that likely pay much more than the PhD stipend. Is it worth spending 3 or 4 years of your early life as a broke student when you have the option of getting your first taste of a bigger income and building wealth in a meaningful way?
The Best of Both Worlds
My solution to this problem so far is to just do both! I currently work full time in a graduate engineering program at JP Morgan whilst doing my part-time PhD in statistical machine learning at Imperial College London. I remember not even knowing this was possible when I was graduating from university. Importantly, though, not every company will support this. For example, my first graduate job was at Deutsche Bank, where they had a strict cost-cutting…
