Why is graduate school so damn competitive?
(rant incoming)
I am trying to get into some Ph.D. programs in the next couple of years in nuclear engineering. I was just thinking about the entire graduate-education system today and how it seems kind of lopsided. It's accepted as the status quo that students should be competing with each other to get into the top schools, and the departments at these schools sometimes pick students on a whim or through personal connections, which leaves many applicants' chances a matter of luck if they are equally qualified. If these top schools have such huge endowments in the tens of billions of dollars, why can they only afford to pay 10-20 new graduate students $20,000 a year? I honestly think a for-profit system would hypothetically be better because, stemming from the high demand for graduate degrees by students, the students would have to pay the universities tuition and in return the universities could guarantee students a spot in accordance with supply and demand.
Worrying over being accepted has been causing me a lot of stress and grey hair lately. Also the fact that I am a mathematics undergraduate major, coupled with possibly getting my first C in college this semester are troublesome. I wonder if I will still be competitive if I receive a C in complex variables? My professor has accused me of procrastinating and I have taken offense at that, because I make every effort to study, attend office hours, attend every class, and do the homework. I just simply don't understand the material very well as it is very abstract. I don't want this to put a stop to my lifetime goal of getting a Ph.D.