Hi all,
Well, I should start hearing from universities soon. I have already heard from NCSU - they accepted me. They offered me $13,000 per year, which isn't enough, however, I might get more. They have yet to decide who to give fellowships, I could get more. Also, I could probably teach in the summer for an extra $2000 to $4000. They pay for my health insurance but not for Nadja's.
I did some living cost comparisons of various areas that I applied for. 100 is normal for all of America. Raleigh/Durham scored 97 (that is, $97 in Raleigh/Durham is worth an average of $100 in other places, so you need less money, so it's cheaper). The scores of the places in CA were around 150, 175, and 200 depending on the location, so I'd need a $26,000 stipend in Berkeley to match the $13000 stipend from NCSU. Crazy, huh?
Since I'll have to support both myself and Nadja on my stipend and since I want to buy a house, I think I've pretty much decided to study in NC. Now, of course, I have to decided which university I want to study at and what city I want to live in. The choices are Duke, UNC, and NCSU. Duke is in Durham, UNC is in Chapel Hill, and NCSU is in Raleigh. The decision for a place to live is between Raleigh and Durham. Chapel Hill is out of the question due to housing costs (no houses below $100,000). But for those of you who don't know the area, Durham and Chapel Hill are direct neighbors.
Raleigh and Durham, however, and not so direct neighbors. They are neighboring cities, but there is a bit of a commute between them. Both cities have advantages and disadvantages. One big advantage of Durham is that the housing stock is much cheaper - Raleigh lacks a wide choice of housing in the sub-$75000 range (there is some, but not as much). However, Durham has a reputation of being a higher-crime city than Raleigh. I'm honestly not sure which city I'd like more. They both often rank very high in national rankings of cities and towns. I recently discovered another possible factor to consider. If I decide to go to NCSU, which is the university in Raleigh, my university ID will let me ride for free on the city and regional busses, specifically, I can take the bus to and from Durham for free. This would mean I could live in Durham and study in Raleigh. A bus ride takes an hour in each direction or 45 minutes during rush hour (yes, less during rush hour since they have express busses during that period which drive without stop between the two cities). While that sounds like a lot, the trip from my place to Nadja's last about an hour last semester, so I got used to it. I can do homework in the bus. That actually wouldn't be that bad.
Yeah... NCSU is technically is the lowest rated university that I applied to, but they actually seem to have a nice program. They offer a lot interesting courses and they don't seem to be overly demanding. For example, they don't require me to learn any foreign languages. They have a large department so there are plenty of interesting professors to choose from. They also have some cool industrial mathematics programs. While I am more interested in pure mathematics, I don't know if a career in academics is the way I should go - I know I wouldn't want to work at a German university if I went back to Germany. I also would like to do some cool stuff in indsutry (whether that would require a PhD in math is a different question!).
So I don't know what to expect. It may also turn out that no university offers us a livable amount of money. If not, I guess I'd get a job. However, NCSU seems to be generous. They offered to pay for a flight to the US and a hotel stay so that I could come to the orientation. However, that is a little close to the wedding, so I can't do it.
Oh, well. We'll see what happens.
-Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment