Graduate Student Report: First-Year Physics and Astronomy Students, 2003-2004
by Patrick J. Mulvey, and Casey Langer Tesfaye
Highlights
- The number of US citizens enrolling in physics departments has risen 47% since 1998-99. They now comprise 55% of first-year physics and astronomy students (Figure 1) and (Table 1).
- First-year astronomy student enrollments have increased 52% from a recent low in the fall of 1997. The 218 students enrolling in the fall of 2003 is the highest number ever recorded by this report series (Figure 2).
- China continues to supply US physics and astronomy graduate programs with more foreign students than any other country, and their proportion has been increasing in recent years. The gains seen from Asia are offset by declines in the proportion of students enrolling from Western Europe, and even more so, Eastern Europe (Table 3).
- Of the newly enrolled foreign students, about 9% indicated they experienced a delay in entering their current graduate department due to problems in obtaining their visa (Page 6).
- Eighty-six percent of first-year physics and astronomy graduate students received a full tuition waiver, with an additional 10% receiving a partial waiver. The likelihood of receiving a tuition waiver varied by the type of department in which the students were enrolled (Table 7).
- The median annual stipend reported by first-year physics and astronomy Teaching Assistants was $14,500. Research Assistants had a median of $16,000, and students with Fellowships had a median of $18,000 (Table 8).
- The most popular subfield chosen by US students was astronomy & astrophysics, followed closely by condensed matter, and particles and fields. Among foreign students condensed matter was by far the most popular subfield (Table 6).
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