I started at 27 and still felt pretty behind the curve at a lot of points because of it. Not necessarily inside the academy, where no one really cares about age, but because while my friends were in the prime move-making parts of their careers and starting families and all that, I was doing problem sets and taking comps then writing a dissertation. Having a social circle mostly outside of the academic world made it very very tough to go through a PhD at a slightly older age, and for me it’d be hard to imagine starting one too much later than I did. I think I even started a little too late, to be honest.
I know everyone’s journey is different and blah blah blah, but honestly, what is the age where you’d say the ship has probably sailed for someone considering a PhD?