<p>Research tech jobs pay about as much as graduate school in the field pays. In biology, techs and graduate students make around $30k a year – plenty of money, even in a city like Boston. I think physics grad students tend to have slightly lower stipends than biology (and so techs likely make less money, too), but stipends/tech salaries in these fields are definitely enough to live on. I’ve never heard of a tech having to take another job to make ends meet.</p>
<p>You might consider sending a PM to pebbles (Lulu from the blogs) – she’s doing tech stuff this year in physics before applying to graduate school, so she’ll know more than I do about job availability and salaries.</p>
<p>It’s still tough to have great letters after spending three years as an undergrad and one as a tech, but if you know that’s the plan going in, you can focus on developing relationships to get good letters from the beginning. Your letters should be from professors who can discuss your potential as a researcher, so they can be from professors who’ve supervised you in a UROP or professors who have seen your intellectual work in a class.</p>