If I were you I would go to NYU only if the uni offers funding. Otherwise it is not worth paying 3-4 (or more) years of fees+ expenses.

One thing that might work, is your wife getting a part-time job, you staying two mornings a week at home (assuming you don't need to be in the lab everyday), and probably pay only one-day per week daycare and/or some domestic help to offload some weight off your wife's shoulders.

It really depends on the PhD. My PhD was very labor-intensive and time consuming. I don't have a family, but I did neglect my friends during the hardest periods, and I was often sleep deprived. However, other people treat their PhDs as a 9-5 job and they manage fine.

There are plenty of online places offering these kind of services. I chose the cheapest I could find for my PhD, and paid £450 for less than 50.000 words- I suspect that they charged the tables in the word count too. The service was poor, they only checked for basic English mistakes. Some sentences were poorly written, but they didn't suggest re-writing (some bits are hair-raising, really bad). Other more posh services with proofreading and editing by scientists working in the field asked as much as £2500, but my super was not prepared to spend that much. I would honestly have paid the money for a good editing if I had any (but I am broke). I think it is totally worth submitting a document without careless obvious mistakes.

I would assume that for 90.000 words you would probably need at least a couple of weeks work, so you should ask at least for your living expenses for this period.

Hi charliebrown,

At the end of the day, major revisions just allow you more time to do the changes, which is a good thing considering that most people need to start working. Don't be disappointed, the important thing (as Sunflower12 said) is to keep working on your thesis to get it just right.

Hi burla009,

I assume you are talking about a master's dissertation. Normally, the word count is limited somewhere between 10 to 15.000 words, depending on the university and the course. In that sense, you will only have to include studies that they are more relevant to the aim of the dissertation. It would be best, if you can compare your findings with the literature in the discussion. In that sense, ideally your literature review should complement the overall argument of your dissertation.

Hope this helps

Make sure you get good night sleeps, and not staying up at night because of the stress. Brain fog is just tiredness and bad sleep quality.

Some days during writing up, I was waking up feeling absolutely tired because I had restless nights with stress-induced dreams. I learned to cut my losses: if it was one of those days, just took the day off. Go to the park, read a book, watch a movie. First try to fix your sleep patterns. Going to bed at certain times and waking up with an alarm clock same time everyday helps, also meditation before going to bed was helpful for me. The best was just going to bed thinking how much I don't care about the PhD.

Controlling the stress levels was one of the biggest challenges for me, and my biggest enemy. Just try to write a section a day, don't be too hard on yourself, at the end it is all going to fall together. Just keep going,

Hi Eilatan90,

every start is difficult. I also struggled a lot moving to a new city and getting adjusted to the new lifestyle and job responsibilities. Your partner should be supportive, and not adding to your stress.

But you need to be more positive about the whole thing. It is a new experience, enjoy the opportunity you were given. PhDs can be hard and stressful, but you will get to go to international conferences, see your work published, and contribute a tiny little bit to current knowledge. Most importantly, someone is paying you so that you can learn and develop yourself.

Hi stevemilw,

I can only talk about my personal experience of just submitting a PhD in a related field.
I wouldn't say it was a good financial move, as for the first three years I have been receiving very little money, while in the fourth funding was over, and I had to fetch for myself. I had to get by on very little money from occasional part-time jobs. My EngD colleagues receive more money than the PhD candidates, and their funding extends for four years. However, as they need to work in their sponsors and complete an MReS during the EngD period, their chances of completing within the four years are small.

As far as employment goes, I know that there are plenty of people with a PhD or EngD looking for work. Two potential employers that interviewed me were mildly dissatisfied when I told them that I want the equivalent of a post-doc salary (£35k), and they opted to hire grad students instead.

The master and the PhD (and some lost time in between) took me six years. I do believe that if I had invested this time and effort in the industry, it would have been far more rewarding in financial terms. This is not to say that I wouldn't do the PhD again, I would, but for different reasons.

Hi Barramack,

here in London the studentship can be anything from £15K to £18K depending on the funding body, while the cheapest room one can find is £7K, without including commuting. Funding is for three years, although everyone takes at least 3.5 years. Moreover, when we work in the department, we don't get paid extra because teaching activities, marking, supervising dissertations are "in our contract, and is good for our CVs".
When at the same time the universities charge £12K for each master student (or more) and contribute more than 12 billion in the UK economy!

Most of us work in funded projects, and do exactly what a post-doc does for half the money. We are the cheap cheap labor at the bottom of the feeding chain. We are expected to have an academic output of at least three journal publications, without of course getting paid extra for the time it requires. We don't get maternity leave, sick leave, nothing.

I just submitted my PhD at exactly 4 years, absolutely poor and in debt. In my case, I had very little savings when I started the PhD, and I have no one to help me out financially, because my £7K rent is what my whole family earns cumulatively. I had to work throughout the last year, while writing up, and couldn't even earn enough money to buy food everyday. I can never afford to take more than a day-off per month. I don't even remember when was the last time I bought clothes, or other "unnecessary" expenses, like new glasses.

So, yes, doing this unnecessary thing the PhD, and living the luxurious life of a PhD student on tax-payers money! I will now move in a brown paper back in the park, because I don't deserve hot water, or heating or food.

and this (similar to the above already proposed)

The PRISMA methodology

http://www.prisma-statement.org/statement.htm

Hey shoulder,

I think you did the decent thing to withdraw from this project. Hope you get a new job soon and get out of the poverty that comes with doing a PhD.

It is not uncommon to find papers that lack robust methodology, perform sloppy statistical analysis, and still get published and make a big impact!

Hi LostOne,

I also did a systematic review for my PhD. It took me ages to review all the papers, and even longer to extract all the data manually to perform the meta-analysis. I also did the methodology chapter simultaneously, as I was critically analysing the results based on the methods used. So, in the same period I also decided on my methodology and equipment.

I was clueless on my topic when I started the PhD, as it was overlapping with three disciplines- so I had to cover the basics in all new areas. I would say it took me 7 months until I managed to get the first draft out, and on that draft I was working for another 2 months (interrupted) to polish it. It got published with very minor revisions, and also gave me the foundation to write my discussion chapter. In retrospective, I would say, it was time well spent. Also gave me an advantage compared with the other students who started fieldwork right away without really knowing what they are looking for.

The only drawback is that after four years, I had to update it... but I only added a few studies, I really don't have the time anymore to re-do all the graphs and tables...

On the other hand, this is your real life for 4 years, so try to enjoy it as much as you can. Work hard, party hard.

There is no guarantee that tmr life will be better.

You can keep applying for jobs, hopefully something better will come up.

This probably has nothing to do with your supervisor, but with the administrative staff in the department. August is like the "official academia holiday month", our department is almost empty, so it wouldn't be surprising if everyone is on holidays.

Also chase it up, you won't "offend" them. In my case, I accepted the offer, my sponsor send the contract to the school, and the school secretary somehow managed to lose it. So, I had to ask the company to sign a new contract (that stressed me out of my head), and after I managed to sort it out, the first "lost" contract re-appeared... Well...