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Question for graduate math students in their 30's | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

[new] Older students (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by Cotati on Mon Jan 14, 2008 at 10:39:29 AM PDT

I'll echo what umgaowa said. I went back to grad school in 2002 after 23+ years in the software industry. Getting into the master's program at Cal. State Hayward was not difficult. The same is probably true of many non-PhD-granting institutions. While I was there, I was advised by faculty members that I was not too old to go for a doctorate if I wanted to. More to the point, since I want to teach at the college or university level, they told me that age discrimination in hiring, while it exists, is not nearly so common as it is in industry. And as for funding, once you manage to get into a PhD program, it is most probable that you will have a teaching assistantship, which waives your tuition and pays a modest stipend. That was all the encouragement I needed. I do not know what goes on behind the closed doors of the admissions process for PhD programs, but I am confident that age discrimination is not a factor there at most places. I am now in my fourth year in the PhD program here at University of Washington, making good progress.

I too have heard expressed the notion that math research is only a young person's game. You'll never earn the Field's Medal, and neither will I. But so what? My own advisors don't believe that productive research is limited to the young (and not simply because I am making it). I think math is no worse, and probably in fact better, than most pursuits: many people get tired of life in general as they get older, and lose their passion for whatever it is they do or once did. Productivity is a function of ongoing passion for the subject.

Question for graduate math students in their 30's | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)

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