FAQ for NYU CDS PhD (medical school track) Program

Since I get a lot of emails with questions about CDS program, I decided to compile some of my email answers together and update them as new questions come up! Please consider this personal and casual – definitely not an “official CDS student life guide” :p

1. OLab

Lab environment: collaborative, flat, friendly (like a startup because we’re a new lab). We have PhD students, Master students, Undergrads, a few high school students. (currently no postdoc yet) From medical school we have residents and medical students.

Work in person: when I come to the lab during work hours (weekday 9-5), there are usually a subset of people. However, it is not required that we come in everyday and I come in person 1-2 days a week (usually for meetings). I spend other days at CDS, Tandon, coffee shops and libraries.

If you join as a CDS medical track student, you will have two offices: one at Tisch Hospital Medical Science Building, and one at Center for Data Science.

We communicate on Slack and have monthly group dinners for socializing. Eric also brings people together by suggesting collaboration.

2. NYU

Curriculumn: See official webpage. The gist is there’s only 5 required courses. You can fill the rest with research.

Teaching: I was a TA/grader for the NLP class. And I’m a grader for ML class. I like being a TA because helping students is very rewarding and it’s fun to write problem set. But it’s also more time assuming. In terms of return per unit of time, I find grader to be a better option.

Living: I live off campus at NoMad/kips Bay Area with my husband. We share a studio and the rent is affordable but I wish I have more space. I choose to live in Manhattan because I prioritize shorter commute over space. For friends who value big apartments more, they tend to live in upper Manhattan, Jersey city and Brooklyn, where you can get 1/2 bedroom in 2k-3k range. I believe biomedical school offers good on campus housing in Kips Bay with around ~1k for a private single room in a shared suite? A lot of people also live in stuytown.

Why I chose NYU

• advisor match: I think Eric and Cho are both great mentors and they want to train students to be leaders and independent thinkers in their field
• research match: I wanted to pivot from more theory to more real world impact work, after seeing how much my family members suffered in illness.
• NYC: I feel like I can do anything here! So many good food, museum, performances, interesting people, all kinds of classes (think tap dance not causal inference), good public transportation, Central Park and Prospect Park keeps you close to nature… this is a place where I want to spend a great chunk of my 20s. (Also contemplating living my life here, lol)
• Data and compute: our lab specifically are very competitive on those. Eric handled all the IRB so data is just a sql away.
• People: I like the people in our lab! I think it’s really important to like the people if you’re gonna be stuck with them for 5+ years :p

3. Research

Least favorite part: GPU breakdown :( I guess it’s kinda unavoidable that when you have more GPUs, the chance of one of them breaking down is higher. When it happens I need to contact the HPC to fix them and sometimes help them locate the cause. I hope this debugging phase will go away after our cluster becomes more stable.

Favorite places to study:

• Langone health science library, facing garden
• 787 coffee, facing street
• Bobst Library, facing Washington square park
• CDS (my office)
• Brooklyn Tandon cafeteria
• Ariston (flower shop with coffee)

For my collaboration, I try to make them parallel such that works are relatively independent. This way everyone can work at their own pace.

Summer internship: This summer will be my first internship. Last summer I was stuck in China for a visa (trying to prove I’m not a spy :p). The first summer, I chose to stay and do research in fear of getting scooped. P.S. when you choose to stay in the summer, they pay a bit more.

Work life balance: When I first started as a fresh CMU grad, I didn’t understand the “life” part because our school’s motto is “my heart is in the work” :p But working nonstop has led to burnout, especially because research has no end, unlike an undergrad homework.
Starting my 2nd year, I found more balance by planning fun activities on the weekend and after work. I learned that if I don’t plan anything active, it will be occupied with work. On a weekday, I typically work 9-12, with 1 hour lunch break, then 2-5 (sometimes I stay till 6 or 7 if I have deadlines or have extra meetings that day). My leisure activities include: cooking dinner, doing yoga, taking dance class, watching movies, which take around 1-4 hours. If I have time, I work 1-2 hour before winding down for sleep at around 11. When there is a deadline, I sometimes need to work nonstop for a few days. It takes around a week to slowly recover afterwards. I am trying to avoid doing this by planning my work better. On the weekend, I usually work half day or one day full of work and one day full of fun. Sometimes I go on a ski/hiking trip and don’t work at all (at the cost of working extra hard/efficiently during weekdays).

4. Finance

My funding each year is the same, with around 5% inflation adjustment each year.

The pre-tax funding for 2023-2024 (9 month data science fellowship + 3 month summer medical fellowship) is around 58K.

In the first year, there’s a $7000 on-time payment for purchasing a new laptop, relocation and security deposits etc.

I think it’s enough to cover the cost of living in New York. For me, my first-year rental is a large studio in Manhattan ($2400). Since I share it with my husband, the effective rental is $1200. If you are in CS, you are eligible for the MacCracken Housing Program, and having a bedroom in a shared 2-bedroom apartment is around $1225 per month. (Note: this program is currently not available for DS student, perhaps we should fight for it :p)

Food: I spend around $400 per person on groceries (can be lowered since I go to Whole Foods), $200 per person at restaurants ($50 per person, once a week), $100 per person at fast casual places (think sweetgreen and chipotle, with $20 per person cost). So food costs around $700 per person.

Insurance: NYU paid for medical insurance, but not dental insurance. You can pai $250 a year for the stu-dent plan (waived if you’re a grader or TA), where NYU dental students will see you with up to 2 free cleaning per year.

Others: personal care (haircut is around $50, massage is around $100), gym (unlimited yoga for $200, rock climbing is $35 per visit, tap dancing is $25 per class, etc), transportations (subway is $2.5/ride, and taxi is around $20), entertainment (movies is $20, museums and parks are free, jazz performance $50), subscriptions (Amazon prime $15 per month, Duolingo, etc).

Saving: I typically have $400/month saved in my roth IRA account for retirement savings. I like having savings for unexpected situations, but I know some friends don’t save at all. Their argument is that we can expect to earn a lot more after graduating – so if saving significantly impacts their quality of life, then they choose to enjoy the moments and not save, because the saved amount would not be that much in the context of future salary.

Other income sources:

• TA or grader (around $5k per semester pre tax). You can be both for a course.
• peer tutor
• summer internship
• part-time intership (up-to-20 hour) during the semester