Hi.

I have an issue. Here's the deal.

I am a 3rd year PhD student at a good UK university.

Stanford extended an invitation to me for Visiting Researcher status. It all seems perfect. Stanford is an institution to hang on to. Plus my guy is there and it would be a good opportunity to combat long distance.

The problem is that I will be required to pay 3675 USD per quarter. And 800 USD for health insurance. I will be there for 2 quarters. This would amount upto around 9000 USD.

I think it's worth it to be able to put on my cv that I was a Visiting Researcher at Stanford. I might not get this opportunity this easily any other time as I might not find the professor to invite me to the department. As you know, in order to be eligible for visiting an institution, one must be sponsored by a member of the department.

Is it worth it?

I think the only person who can decide if it's worth it is you... Is this experience worth the 9k, in your opinion? Sounds like you wanna go for it and if you can afford it, then I say do it! :-)

I agree. You sound like you really want to do it! If it were me however and there was a chance I was risking my financial future on it, I wouldn't. If you can afford it though it may be worth that 9k in the future anyway when it comes to future career opportunities...

As other said, you should decide what to do. If I was faced with this question, I would think about if I can afford this without being skint at the end.Then I would write down the positives and negatives (pretty old and boring method but it works for me everytime).(up)

I love this forum a lot. It's quite helpful with all the different input one gets. I guess I'll have to think this out.

Im not sure what field you are in but some organizations eg Society for general microbiology, offer grants for trips such as these which would help offset your costs

My wife always says that "money comes and goes". Coupled with my father's repetitive "you have to speculate to accumulate" saying, my advice would be to do it. Whilst we as scientists and social scientists (and all other acs) tend not to accumulate in terms of monetary gratification we do in terms of opportunities - often opportunities the next man would love to sacrifice their BMW or Porsche for. Go for it, you never know what the next step of the ladder will bring!