<p>does anyone know of biosciences departments that are open to have phd students consult on the side? i’ve recently come across this kind of opportunity and as an applicant i am wondering if this would be OK to mention during interviews. i assume the university would require disclosure of external financial revenue. thoughts?</p>
<p>I don’t think they would care as long as you do not use university resources.</p>
<p>The other thing is that in a lot of the good programs, a Ph.D student will be hard pressed to find the time to do consulting.</p>
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<p>I know in my particular group almost everyone winds up doing some sort of consulting for various spinoff companies that came out of our lab.</p>
<p>I think it’s fairly unusual, though.</p>
<p>Depends on how much consulting you are doing. I consult for two separate companies. Together they take up less than 10 hours a week, but combined they will provide me an extra ~$500 in income a month. One is specifically designed for graduate students, and the other one no one really knows about but it does not interfere with my work, so…<em>shrug</em> I also have consulted for individual professors in research project work in which they needed a statistician. I loooove that, I get to work on a lot of different projects and I like data.</p>
<p>Don’t mention it in your interviews. Continue to investigate the opportunity on your own, quietly, while you interview. When you get into graduate school, explore the opportunity with the person/company you will be consulting for. How much time will it take? Is it realistic for you to juggle that with your PhD work? Put out feelers for your advisor, program, etc., and see if it would be advantageous for you to tell them.</p>
<p>I don’t feel like I need to tell my advisor everything that I do with my time when it does not conflict with my PhD work.</p>
<p>juillet- how did you find these consulting jobs? are they posted on company’s job sites?</p>
<p>I know that for some programs your fellowship will disallow it because they want the extra time put in to your work. I knew one PhD student (Sociology, iirc) who did 8 or 10 hours in something semi- crummy, $20 per hour and easy, just to get by and did that on the sly.</p>