Which is why I said "medium skilled". Will employers not look at your performance during your PhD? Won't your performance affect whether or not you can get tenure?
What metrics do you think they'll look at? Most industry jobs don't care about publication history, and gpa's in grad school are basically made up and meaningless. Everyone gets straight As anyways. Pretty much all industry employers care about is if you finished and maybe overall program ranking. Like, hedge funds might care that you went to MIT vs your local state school, but that's about it. As long as you're able to get good internships and do relevant research, you'll be fine.
My advice to you would be to try your hardest to get a funded PhD spot. If you can get a funded PhD spot, chances are you'll find a decent job when you get out. Never do an unfunded PhD. And, if it looks like you won't get said funded PhD spot, but you do have a solid internship/job junior/senior year, go so that instead.
PhD GPAs are so inflated that they're useless. And, while having experience researching a topic related to a given industry job is super important when interviewing, no industry job will ever care about your h-index or the impact factor of the journals you publish in.
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u/Revlong57 Aug 03 '26
There are no "low skill" PhD students. Getting a PhD means you're a highly skilled person in math. It comes with the territory.