I am a foreign student looking to do a PhD (mathematics) at ETH next year. I've been accepted now, and they offered a salary of 3500 CHF per month. This salary seems very high to me (it is twice as much as I am being paid during my Master's degree in Canada). However, now I have heard that in Switzerland you can make 3500 CHF per month by working in fast food...
My questions are:
1. Is this a normal salary for a PhD student at ETH/in Switzerland?
2. How difficult will it be to live on 3500 CHF per month?
3. How likely is it that my salary will increase next year?
4. Is it common for prospective PhD students to negotiate their salary before accepting the offer?
I am a strong student, with more research experience/publications than average. I think that this would help me negotiate. However, I do not speak German, and so it will take at least a year until I can do much teaching. I'm wondering if that might hurt my chances...
5. What happens with students who win external awards?
I've applied for a scholarship from the Canadian government of about 19,000 CHF per year. Typically, if I was to use this award at a Canadian university, then the university would reduce their contribution to my stipend (although, the total stipend is at least a few thousand larger than it would be without the award). I'm wondering what they do in Switzerland, and specifically at ETH.
Did you bother to read the existing 5-10 discussions on your topic? The forum has a search function and even just scrolling down to the "related topics" box shows me five threads that discuss pretty much all your questions. Except of the one on your Canadian thing... how on earth are people in Switzerland supposed to know that?
While I agree the OP needs to read the umpteen billion existing threads related to salary, this point is a bit unfair. It has nothing to do with anything Canadian - he's saying that he will have an additional stream of income and is wondering if his stipend at a Swiss university would be reduced because of it. I think that's a fair question, not that I know the answer.
I read other discussions before posting. I found 2 or 3 that were relevant, not 5-10. Clearly I am not an experienced forum poster, as you must be, so I may have missed a few.
I guess that I already knew the answer to my second question (my mistake in posting it), but I still can't find an answer to the other four.
deduct about total of 20-25 %+ for all the deductions. You will be taxed at source meaning the tax comes straight out every month.
rent is very high in CH so consider finding a shared room/apartment
with 5kgross you can live comfortably on your own meaning that you do not have to look at cost everytime you buy something or rent but you still cannot go splurging around.
3500 will work but you will need to budget a little bit here and there but will be totally fine .
in CH there is no official minimum wage but it is often suggested to be around 3000 to give you an idea
Also scroll down to the bottom of this page , there will be several suggested topics discussed before hand
As a PhD you usually get paid for 50% work and spend the other 50% writing on your thesis, which is not paid. However, you can make an extra 10/20 percentage by doing work for your section, if there are pockets of grant money. You won't get more, as you need time to write your own studies.
You can also be paid for teaching, which generally is equal to 1 month's salary per topic per semester.
You should get a tax break on your health insurance- so you pay less. You get the form after 1 year of working. Also your salary will increase in the 2nd year.
It is possible to live on that amount. Many survive on it!
Hi, I'm a postdoc at the ETH, and here is my understanding of the way stipends work for students (and postdocs):
1. Yes. You got a 60% contract, which is standard for PhD students (see link). A few lucky souls get more (physics, some institutes in biology, I'm not sure about Math), but this is dependent on the institute, not your advisor.
2. You'll be okay. You will need to either share a flat or have a small place (and not in the middle of the city).
3. Salary will increase next year and in the third year (see link).
4.Nope, you usually do not negotiate. This is because salaries are set by the ETH and contract percentages are set at the institute level, so your advisor doesn't really have any say. You can feel free to ask the other graduate students in the lab what a "standard contract" is. It should be the same percentage for all students.
5. With external awards that pay less than the stipend, your advisor makes up the difference. Departments may do this in two ways: 1) they reduce the percentage of your contract so you are paid less and you keep your external money or 2) you pay your external money to your advisor, who then gives you your full 60% contract wage.
I would also agree to the points said above. You should not be worried about this amount much as you will probably end up saving a good amount of money after you settle down. Not to mention if you live in a shared flat or a student house, your saving index goes higher. Moreover, I think ETH also offers you some travel card and this helps too.
Forget about bargaining, if you do that you might end up losing the position. You have no choice I would say. However, you are in one of the best paid institute across the globe and the BRAND matters too.
For the rest of the world 3500 is a great salary. It is just that there are not really any bad salaries in Switzerland so you can't really compare it with the rest of the world. If you get a small place and don't have too high standard of living expectations you can definitely pay for everything you need on this salary. I have been a student here for the past 3 years and I could live comfortably on around 20-25k a year. As far as PhD salary is concerned Switzerland is definitely the golden ticket.. and many of my friend who have PhD here completely agree.
I wondered the same and had to laugh at your way of putting it.
My boss wouldn't even say a word of contempt if I dared ask anyone a question I could easily find out myself.
But it seems to be a common theme with academic types, we have it a lot in our company with interns who got brilliant grades at Uni but seem to be unable to figure out even the most simple things by themselves.
FYI, the travel card is the halbtax (half price fare card). It is given for free if you are a student. If you travel regularly in Zurich, you would probably get a ZVV card, which is 531 CHF for a Junior pass (under 25).
Otherwise, there is also a discount on the GA (Generalabonnement), which gives you (almost) unlimited travel in Switzerland. The ETH gives a 15% discount on this.
I'm at the Univeristy of Basel and am from Gibraltar. Considering how different each canton seems to be from one another you should do a lot more research.
My experience this year regarding your questions has been:
Yes, unfortunately. Unless you have free housing, 3500 CHF gross won't cut it for stable living. Don't forget that you have to buy insurance too, and that is not cheap in Switzerland. see above and http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living...ry=Switzerland Not much. Most employers have only an inflation adjusted clause in their contracts, not much more. Don't know. Now THAT is tricky. Read through your contract carefullyand see whether there are any disclaimers for such cases. I've been applying to several PhD scholarships laely and got answers from some. One was http://www.mawista.com/en/scholarship/ and they got in contact directly with my financier. Turns out that my current financier doesn;t allow for external compensation and would cut my current compensation as much as the external one adds.
I wouldn't call my lifestyle frugal, the only difference from living in Canada is that I rarely eat meat now unless it's an occasion, then from meat from Aldi works fine.
I honestly cannot understand how people are struggling on anything more than 2 grand/person. Surely there is no real reason to be blowing that amount of money just to live.
I used to be a post doc at ETH from 2008-2011 end, and unless things have drastically changed (actually they haven't, as I am still an occasional visiting researcher there and know people there) and I would like to point out that your understanding is not quite right. No, it is NOT dependent on the institute, HR just writes the contract at the percentage fixed by the Prof. Only the institute-wide base rate (i.e. 100% salary) is set by ETH.
Obviously norms vary from department to department, but in some departments it is very common to negotiate with the advisor (or employer as post docs would see). I had competing offers and negotiated very gently before joining and got a revised offer from 75% to 100%. Whether to negotiate or not depends on individual cases. I wouldn't recommend phds to negotiate as readily as I would for post docs though. It need NOT be the same percentage for all phds students; it really depends on your expected performance and marital status primarily. That said, variations among Phd students within a group are uncommon.
OP: hope you will sift through the tons (well, not exactly, but at least 900kg) of relevant threads, it has been done to death