<p>@post</p>
<p>I have worked in roughly two research institutes in the UK and another European country (Chemistry incidentally) with people with PhDs from nearly every European country possible. Also saw some of the PhD students in action and I can compare them quite confidently with US PhDs that I worked with. I also have a lot of friends in UK phds like Cambridge et al. Major things I noticed:</p>
<p>1) UK PhDs are in general much easier to get than US ones. The mantra is: Regardless of the quality of your work you will graduate in 3-4 years. </p>
<p>2) The workload in the UK is much much easier too, they work from 9-5pm and then they leave and go home. They also have like 1 hours of lunch and 2 hours of facebook time inbtw each day. The stress of a UK PhD is way way less than that of a US Phd. No qualifiers, no courses, no teaching just 9-6 research and they never work during the weekends. That is a no no. the 80 hours week you have in the US is basically nonexistent. The lab I worked in shut down at 6pm and all the PhD students have to be out.</p>
<p>3) PhD programs in the US are crazy/intense relative to those in other countries. Thank whatever god you worship that you got into Cambridge. You are getting a PhD for less stress trust me. No one is gonna turn their nose towards a Cambridge Phd and you would not be aged significantly. Most PhD chemist at top schools work 60-80 hours a week- that’s Investment banking work hours for crappy pay.</p>
<p>4) All European PhDs are not the same. From experience, some continental European PhDs (say Germany) are just as good as the top US ones (regardless of world rankings) and they work the same crazy hours. The UK PhD in say chemistry work less hours though and I would consider less rigorous. What confuses me is how relaxed most of the labs i worked in the UK are relative to American ones while being able to publish papers in top journals.</p>
<p>However this could be due to the fact that the US and the UK houses most of the major research journals gives their institutions a lot of prestige in the research world.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They tend to do that because of the insularity of American academia, which makes it difficult to apply for academic positions without a US Phd, so immediately they get into the US they can start applying for post-docs. I know quite a couple of people who did this but most were trying to just get into the united states not really to get a new PhD.</p>
<p>Also most people would do anything to live in the US- personally don’t know why- but that’s kind of how it is.</p>