QED Research for grad school??

[drmike]

I had a hard time deciding between UofM and UW-madison. If you are already there, getting exposure to other environments is probably a good thing and you'll still be in a top notch (i.e. you'd better be busting your butt)
university.

Definitely find profs to talk to. If there's even a hint of a fit, you'll have a hard time escaping their clutches.

[StevePoling]

One of the things my daughter has noted about nuclear engineering is that there's a bimodal distribution of ages among nuclear engineers: There are young kids like her and there are old guys who want to retire with nobody in between.

Clearly, the unpopularity of fission after Three-Mile Island & Chernobyl shooed away an entire generation of potential nuclear engineers. Nobody died b/c of Three-Mile Island, but its timing, coincident with the Hanoi Jane Fonda movie, was a perfect storm of bad PR.

[Mike Holmes]

Can't I just be a teaching assistant or something?

Uh, when speaking to those who hold those "jobs" the word "starvation" seems to come up in conversation a lot.

Things may have changed since my day, however; that was nigh on 20 years ago now. But I wouldn't bet on it. In any case, in Madison it's hard to leave (my escape took years). So the PhDs there are piled high indeed. Simply not enough academic jobs to go around. But that's OK, the cabbies do pretty well. And in the meanwhile they've probably got their own fusor in the trunk...

Mike

P.S. I have to tone down the scare quotes, don't I?