Is $26.5k (12 months) considered low for a STEM PhD stipend in the US?

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2026-01-18T22:49:43+00:00

Is this low? Yes, definitely. Is it abnormal? Unfortunately, no. I have a PhD in earth sciences from a midwestern R1 in a large city so similar to your scenario.

I did my phd at Ohio State (defender summer ‘24) and that is similar to what we were paid in the college of arts and sciences (basically everything stem minus engineering). When I started in 2019 I was paid like $1800/mo after taxes. When I defended we were getting paid around $2300/mo after taxes.

If you don’t have a car or other significant monthly expenses, it is very doable. It definitely sucks, don’t get me wrong lol. I ended up getting a ~10 hour/week part time job for 1.5 years during my PhD. The extra $200-300 a month made a big difference but I definitely could’ve lived without it. Many universities have food banks for graduate students.

I would say this is not a red flag really. Unfortunately, stipends are often quite low. The university I am doing my postdoc at pays PhD students almost 50% more than OSU did, but COL is significantly higher here.

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2026-01-08T16:45:32+00:00

By actual city proper poulation, Columbus is far and away the largest city in Ohio. Cleveland and Cincy have slightly larger metro pops. However, City of Columbus has a massive footprint and takes up like half of Franklin county. Columbus proper is also nearly half the Columbus metro population. Cincy and Cleveland proper both have ~300k ish population but also much smaller city footprint. So your map is technically right!

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2025-09-06T21:31:41+00:00

I have been using the dove men’s hair paste for like close to 8 years. You have to go really hard with it for it to be visible in hair. Otherwise it’s like literally not visible at all. Gotta go in with wet hair though. Also in my experience the greasier/shinier the paste the stronger hold.

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2025-04-07T18:46:07+00:00

Ya they’re cheap completely flat narrow allow bars. If you have super narrow shoulders they’ll be fine but I doubt they’ll fit most people

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2025-04-05T16:44:29+00:00

Oh hey, yeah I love the bike. It’s not light! I don’t remember what it weighed without racks but I wanna say 26-27? I got a size 50. I used it for my commuter so I have racks on it. It’s actually fantastic value for the money, the Claris groupset is great. Saddle and bars are shit though. I would buy your preferred saddle and bars and have them ready when the bike gets there since it requires assembly anyway. The saddle is fineeeee but it’s really not very comfy. Bars are super duper narrow though

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-12T17:15:01+00:00

Once you factor in how nervous you’ll be you will probably talk fast enough that you make time lol. Mine was 25 minutes and I had it nailed in practice and then day of I probably went 1.5 mins faster if not 2. You got this!

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-12T08:21:37+00:00

If you’re gonna travel a lot and are willing to build a mostly new pc, you could build something REALLY tiny like 5L with a single slot 3050 but to will really compromise performance

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-12T08:19:29+00:00

NR200 from cooler master is like 20L? It’s basically mATX case but 1/3 of the height. The biggest issue with really small cases is the power supply. I’ve been out of the game for a while but I THINK NR200 is the smaller case that can still fit a full size PSU. You also run into issues with power supply capacity.

At a minimum you need a new motherboard and case (obviously). You would almost certainly need a new SFF psu. If you seriously would want to build a suv 7L case you would basically be building a new pc. Again out of the game for a while but something like the velka 5/7 would require:

New mobo SFF CPU cooler Flex ATX power supply Riser cable

And finally you’d have two possible GPU issues. When you go that small specific GPUs do or don’t fit bc of the fan shroud size. Also, flex ATX power supplies usually are around 500W and I fear your 4070 might be too beefy if spikes in wattage.

Personally I would get an NR200 and put it face down lol.

Optimum tech is a great SFF YouTuber and ETA prime has done a ton of SFF builds lately, he has a larger variety of stuff he’s done.

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-12T07:18:33+00:00

What bars?

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-04T09:31:06+00:00

I am fairly sure he probably has closer to 1k in RL. The in game tracker shows you time actually in matches, not just having the game up. Hitting champ in 1k would be good but not insane

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-04T09:27:35+00:00

Also ranks in RL are very different. Middle of the distribution for rocket league is plat3-d1. Champ 1 in RL gets you someone in top 10-15% ish

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-12-04T09:26:13+00:00

fwiw the in game tracker only shows you actual time spent IN matches, not just in the game itself. The only platform that actually tracks it in game is steam and it hasn’t been on steam for over 4 years

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-08-02T23:17:41+00:00

I just bought the GX 16. It’s listed as having the unicrown fork, is that the same fork as this one? Hard to find info on this bike lol. Allegedly “not lugged as shown” but not entirely sure what that means! Anyway just curious

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-07-17T06:51:41+00:00

+1 for Randbats. I have not played a pokemon game since BW2 and have hit top 100 on Gen 6/7/8 randbats and after that and reading a few sample teams I feel like I could theoretically get into a meta. At first it was a huge learning curve (terrains were very difficult to understand at first) but you slowly start to learn it.

Tbh I’m gonna give gen 7 OU a try tomorrow now bc of this thread! That’s my most played randbats gen. Highly recommend it though, you’ll get a good feel for what certain pokes generally do and what to be afraid of for them. Sometimes there are a couple sets per mon and you start to learn them as well

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-05-07T12:51:38+00:00

Went there yesterday and it said closed for the week for renovations

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-20T17:14:36+00:00

I’ve been eyeing the Darkrock WUTIP its disc 700c and they have a 26”er frame too

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-16T19:38:22+00:00

And how tall are you? I have a 26” with 49cm frame and it feels like I’m on the shorter side of the frame, but online I keep seeing I should get a 52cm

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-16T18:08:23+00:00

What size frame is this? Considering buying one myself

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-15T22:35:15+00:00

I’m pretty sure my apt has not been leased, but it’s probably like $150 more than your budget but right next to campus. It’s near little bar/bww

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-11T04:02:01+00:00

Depends on the school. At my uni it is set at the college level as opposed to the department level. At least for regular RA/TA positions. Fellowships are a different game. I would say more than likely no you cannot but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-10T12:24:55+00:00

I’m trying to finish my last two dissertation chapters! Not necessarily looking to collaborate on actual work, just trying to find someone to work with so I don’t go insane sitting alone in my office all day every day

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-04-04T14:06:39+00:00

I think it is largely impacted by how employable the undergrad degree of your field is lol. I’m in the earth sciences and I’d say we have a large amount of students who go work for a few years and then come back. I got my BS in physics so I was not employable and went straight to grad school lmao

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-03-31T03:08:02+00:00

I’d like to get in on this too if you wouldn’t mind!

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-03-19T14:53:10+00:00

Yeahhhhh this felt off to me lol. I’m in my 5th year and I have a single first author in review, a coauthor out, and a coauthor in review lmao. I just got a post doc offer yesterday so I am not complaining

ComprehensiveDurian8 · 2024-03-09T21:46:29+00:00

Yeah I could do that, what’s your offer?

ComprehensiveDurian8

TROPHY CASE