About Scientist.chat

Scientist.chat helps you decide whether and how to become a scientist. It covers routes into each field, the PhD decision, postdocs, faculty jobs and the move between academia and industry, with the US first and the UK second.

Who it is for

Older school students, undergraduates, graduate students and people changing careers. The content is written for adults, and it is not a children's science site.

What it does not do

• It does not answer general science questions or help with homework.
• It does not predict admission to a named university or rank programs.
• It does not list job vacancies or place people in jobs.
• It does not cover data scientist careers as a main topic.

How the numbers are checked

Pay, stipend and doctoral figures come only from official or primary sources, such as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the National Institutes of Health and UK Research and Innovation. Each figure carries its source and the date we retrieved it. The full list is on the sources page.

Pages are reviewed for accuracy against those sources before they go live, and they are updated when new official data comes out. If you find an error, please tell Erlen on the home page: conversations are read when the service is maintained.

Who runs it

Scientist.chat is run by the Arrivau team. It is not connected to any university, funder or government agency.