I have a bachelors. I want a PhD. Help.

[crashtestdummy]

No decent school is going to grant a Ph.D. without peer-reviewed journal publications. So choosing the right advisor is critically important. It's not uncommon to find faculty who are not as prolific when it comes to publishing because of tenure.

It's not that you won't publish, it's that most grad students come in (again, including myself) thinking that they're going to publish very high impact papers. This usually doesn't happen, but you will likely put out some decent lower-level papers. What I was trying to do (in my grumpy, sarcastic way) was indicate that this is fine and will get you a degree, which is far more important than pining for a big paper and getting nothing.

 

[Rumpltzer]

It seems that my PhD experience in EE (semiconductor devices) was better than most. I loved it. I worked on interesting stuff, and I worked for a professor who is at the top of his field. I did good work on interesting projects, and I still do work similar (but less interesting and with much less freedom) to what I did in grad school. I actually miss school because I miss the freedom to just do interesting work.

Grad school is free. They pay a small stipend (~$20K), but it was enough. I went straight from my BS to grad school, so I never had a taste for money or furniture or a decent car. I think it would be hard to have money and then go back to school, but that's me. The stipend was enough for me to travel overseas and wander around Asia ($15 hotels in Thailand beach towns), and I had the time while in school to take off for a couple of weeks and do stuff like this. My boss was cool, and I worked hard the rest of the time so he didn't mind.

I walked out of grad school and into a six-figure salary... you know, because I'm awesome... but pretty much all the guys in my group are at least in the mid-90s, so don't think it's a total financial let-down... at least not for everyone. I mean, it's not lawyer or doctor salary, but it's alright.

The biggest reason that I did the PhD is because I value freedom to do interesting work. I did internships to pay my way through undergrad, and I saw what engineers do. It wasn't too interesting. I prefer research (or at least development), figuring stuff out, creating something new, blah, blah, blah...


PhD. Totally worth it. I'd do it a hundred times over.


YMMV


BTW, I still publish, and I keep up with what others do mostly through journals and conferences.

 

[Magusigne]

So In short. It depends what field you choose.

Personal experience is that a Computer Scientist paired with some basic biology/genetics knowledge and a stats degree = pure win.

We can't keep them employed here because the tech industry scoops them up.
You can take classes in your off time or at night, and possibly through your employer have the courses paid for.

/thread.

 

[uclaLabrat]

No decent school is going to grant a Ph.D. without peer-reviewed journal publications. So choosing the right advisor is critically important. It's not uncommon to find faculty who are not as prolific when it comes to publishing because of tenure.

Again, depends on the field. I know many in mine who are at very good schools for organic chemistry, graduate with no papers, and end up with jobs. The nature of the field is such that it's just simply not always possible to finish a project in 5 years, especially if it's only one person.

 

[LordMorpheus]

The biggest reason that I did the PhD is because I value freedom to do interesting work. I did internships to pay my way through undergrad, and I saw what engineers do. It wasn't too interesting. I prefer research (or at least development), figuring stuff out, creating something new, blah, blah, blah...

This is exactly the reason why I'm in grad school.

 

[KayGee]

It's definitely worth it, if you're in it for the right reasons. The only frustrating experience that I had was the time I lost waiting for a lab to get finished. However, it wasn't a total waste and I ended up doing some research on wind turbines during that period.

 

[alphatarget1]

I'm close to being done with my phD program and it's been fun. Not a lot of horror stories from me. It really depends on who your advisor is and what he/she expects from you.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

I'm close to being done with my phD program and it's been fun. Not a lot of horror stories from me. It really depends on who your advisor is and what he/she expects from you.

This. I have no horror stories. I have a lot of fond memories. Your advisor is the most important consideration in thinking about grad school.

 

[Leros]

BTW, I still publish, and I keep up with what others do mostly through journals and conferences.

Do you work in industry research now? If so, how do you think it compares with purely academic research?

 

[Zargon]

How hard is the CS major? I like computers but afraid i'm going to fail in CS.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/01/how-to-become-a-better-programmer-by-not-programming.html

 

[Rumpltzer]

Do you work in industry research now? If so, how do you think it compares with purely academic research?

Our stuff pretty much only goes into machines for the US govt (read: military stuff that's too specialized/expensive for consumer applications). The stuff I work on is lower even than that; it's all development/research for what we'll be inserting (or maybe not) 6-10 years from now. We're on the edge of state-of-the-art; in some cases, we lead the art.

What I do now is very similar to what I did in school, except I now have teams of engineers (and their managers) to slow me down. As I said in my original posting, grad school was a lot of freedom for me. My work progressed as fast as I chose to do it, and my research advisor was the only man outside of myself who needed to be pleased.

I now find that I have too many bosses, and I find too many instances where people feel that engineering decisions need to be made by committee. I find a lot of insecure middle-managers (not mine in particular) who aren't too bright, feel insecure about their authority, tend to micro-manage their engineers, got to their position by being yes-men to their bosses, and have no hope for future promotion. I'm very surprised (1) that there's so much politics, and (2) that what's best for the lab/work isn't often considered when making decisions.

Despite this, I've been given excellent opportunities to do good work, and I keep at it. I've been most successful by keeping my teams very small and trying to move at a fast enough pace that we can develop results before someone steps in the way.

My biggest issue since leaving school is adapting to "corporate culture," or whatever you want to call all the BS that has nothing to do with the technical work. I shouldn't be surprised by this... and yet I am; even today. It can be infuriating. Really, really infuriating.

Grad school was freedom to do good work, and it was much, much less of the crap.


YMMV