| Comment | No problemo, I didn't really know the differences either before I got involved in research.
The main difference is we get paid a stipend every month for three and a half years, no summer break in funding like undergrads. The stipend payment for a lot of PhD students in the sciences is about £1300/mo, which is between 2x to 3x the monthly amounts undergrads get. We also don't move away for work or back home over summer.
The other major difference is that we're much less likely to throw huge flat parties like the old days. It's a depressing combination of the workload in postgrad programmes being intense, a lot of asocial/older folk as colleagues, and old pals from undergrad moving away for work/cheap mortgages out in the sticks, etc.
tl;dr: postgrad students have a higher, more reliable monthly income and far, far lower risk of loud parties and property damage than undergrads |
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