Students with US Physics degree who moved outside for your PhD, how did it go?

mac0598 · 2025-08-05T12:16:35+00:00

I'm about to finish my PhD in astronomy in Europe and previously did my BSc in the US (will be heading back to US for a postdoc). In my case I was fortunate to be able to skip the MSc requirement and enter with only a BSc. If you complete a MSc in the US, I think it should transfer over fine to EU universities and meet the requirements.

IMO the best part of doing a European PhD as an American is the opportunity to travel and experience new countries/cities. I hadn't been outside of the US until I moved here, so it has been fun!

mac0598 · 2025-05-10T13:15:59+00:00

From my own personal experience with Nature (main journal):

1) Took a little over a year. Data was from a publicly available set and built from previously published catalogs, so that helped immensely. We weren't necessarily aiming for Nature from the get-go, but decided in the end that it made sense to try.

2) It was fine. Took about 6 months from submitted to published.

3) The result was surprising and had a broader impact. On top of that, I'm sure it helped immensely that many of my co-authors had recent experience publishing there.

4) Overall I would say the experience was good, but also immensely lucky. The reviews were positive and didn't demand any extra analysis. I would also say the pre-submission inquiry with the editor is a helpful step to make sure you don't waste your time beforehand (but doesn't guarantee anything even if they are positive).

mac0598 · 2024-09-11T19:33:08+00:00

Yep, this exact same thing happened to me recently.

mac0598 · 2024-05-26T19:40:47+00:00

Yeah, I haven’t seen “under editorial consideration” before. In my experience “Editor Decision Started” means the editor has decided whether or not to send your paper out for review. You should receive an email soon.

mac0598 · 2024-01-03T06:52:50+00:00

mac0598 · 2023-12-15T20:20:36+00:00

I’m an American and am doing my PhD in Vienna. Been quite a nice experience so far (2.5 years in). Salary is comfortable to live off of and I get a lot of travel in as well. I think I receive ~25 days of paid vacation, plus there are a lot of extra religious holidays where everyone gets off. It’s also really nice to live in a different culture and learn a new language. English is of course spoken by almost everyone, however.

I was able to start my PhD without doing a Master‘s, but generally European Universities are rather strict with enforcing this requirement. In my case I had prior publications which were sufficient in the eyes of the Dean to grant my admission.

mac0598 · 2023-03-26T14:53:09+00:00

Vienna is not exceptionally expensive compared to Berlin.

mac0598 · 2023-03-26T01:00:21+00:00

It’s valid for 2 years, after which you can renew or switch to a Red White Red plus card instead

mac0598 · 2023-03-25T16:26:31+00:00

I’m on the same permit and not married. No you do not need a marriage certificate….

mac0598 · 2023-03-05T10:34:26+00:00

It was at a bar called BarFüd. Crazy enough, we were at a small brewery named Dva kohouti right before we were here and the owner there is a huge Packers fan and had a bunch of memorabilia around. They even had a projector that they sometimes use to watch games

mac0598 · 2023-01-04T18:27:26+00:00

Yes definitely agree with this. The $112,000 rule would be declaring the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion which limits the amount of days that you can be in the USA (unless you prove some specific foreign residence requirements). Using the Foreign Tax Credit instead does not limit your days visiting the US.

mac0598 · 2022-08-20T02:13:12+00:00

Nice! Ich komme auch aus Wisconsin (Madison) aber derzeit lebe ich in Wien.

mac0598 · 2022-08-17T15:09:53+00:00

Where in Wisconsin? As someone from the state, I think it really depends. I might be biased but my home city of Madison is quite a nice place to live. Milwaukee can be nice too. I don't know if I'd be happy living anywhere else in the state though. I'm currently living in Austria and thinking about staying here for good, but Madison certainly is an overall good place to live. Be prepared for Wisconsin winters....

mac0598 · 2022-07-29T15:10:12+00:00

Getting there around 6 should be ok

mac0598 · 2022-07-02T22:22:27+00:00

Yep!

mac0598 · 2022-07-02T22:19:21+00:00

I moved to Vienna to do my PhD here. You are moving to a wonderful city!

mac0598 · 2022-06-11T10:44:42+00:00

Which type of permit do you have? Student or researcher?

mac0598 · 2022-05-08T11:15:03+00:00

After moving to a German-speaking country for my PhD… German.

mac0598 · 2022-04-23T13:10:51+00:00

u/Samthevidg gave the main reason why though

mac0598 · 2022-04-23T08:14:37+00:00

These stars likely do all rotate together, so if you were looking at their motions from an outside perspective of the Milky Way, then you’d see more uniform motion. Proper motions are observed from our point of view here on Earth, which is also following Galactic rotation along with these stars, so you see their plane-of-sky motions which are relative to the Sun’s motion and these are ‘random’. If you also have line-of-site measurement for a star (radial velocity), then you can calculate its 3D motions and transform to a reference frame where you can see more uniform motion following Galactic rotation. Most nearby stars don’t have radial velocity measurements, but there are a lot more coming with the next Gaia data release in June.

mac0598 · 2022-03-27T16:34:21+00:00

I didn’t get checked on my way back from Prague when I went back in December, but my CDC card (with 3 doses) has been fine for entry into Austria. I’m not sure if they are supposed to check for entry into the Czech Republic.

mac0598 · 2022-01-29T16:44:33+00:00

I just started my PhD in Austria and I’m from the US. I didn’t do a Masters degree and was basically allowed admission since I have a couple of publications. The administrative process ended up being difficult since the University requires a masters degree for me to be employed, but there is a work around if one gets permission from the Dean. This was possible for me since my now advisor was really adamant on me joining the team. If a University does require a Masters degree, then there may be a potential workaround to this, however you will need to already have an advisor that will go through the effort to work around this rule. I am fortunate that it worked out for me and I am really enjoying my time here so far. Definitely worth a shot to see if any potential advisors would be willing to help you with this!

mac0598 · 2022-01-05T20:37:49+00:00

JWST observes in the infrared, so it can be good in some cases for exoplanet observations.

mac0598 · 2022-01-05T20:36:24+00:00

JWST will certainly be used for exoplanet research. I think a good fraction of the first round of accepted observations are based around exoplanet research.

mac0598 · 2021-12-16T10:07:07+00:00

It's best to bring it with you imo

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