I started a similar thread last year but I’m hoping to get more information. My S is majoring in Civil with a specialization in environmental engineering. He will be graduating next January and is beginning to explore applying to grad school. He has decided to do this rather than look for a job for a couple of reasons. He doesn’t feel that undergrad will prepare him adequately to work in the field of environmental engineering. He is also considering going for a doctorate with the hopes of working in the field as a researcher when he graduates. He is currently working on an environmental engineering research project with a professor at his university that he is really interested in. He can continue with this if he stays at his current school. If he decides to stay where he is he will be auto admitted to the grad program because of his high GPA. He is however wanting to apply to other universities because while his school has a great engineering program it doesn’t have a strong environmental focus. In spite of having a near perfect GPA he has not been a strong standardized test taker so it remains to be seen how he will do on the GRE and what options will be available to him. I am looking for suggestions about how to select a graduate program. Also what should he look for with regard to financial assistance with these programs. Finally any suggestions about preparation for the GRE would also be helpful. Thank you!
As a seasoned graduate admissions counselor for my family (I am 18 admits from 18 apps 
and lots of funding for myself, my wife, and my older daughter) let me tell you that there’s all kinds of considerations…
Going to the same school for undergrad and grad… Yea, kind of nice, but if the program is not ‘strong’, you’re limiting yourself. I did this in a directional state and think I would have learned MUCH more in a ‘better’ school.
Funding… It’s ALL about funding as my daughter found out. We cast a wide net and she ended up with a full ride at a top 10 school that was not even on her radar. So, don’t limit yourself.
GRE… there are classes to prepare. If he has a good GPA it should not be too difficult. Check a place called gradcafe that lists admission statistics for grad schools (in my daughter’s case GRE was all over - architecture - but the top top Ivies and such had some ‘minimums’. At least he would know where he can get into.
PhD: important to choose a good MS program as a stepping stone. That’s what my daughter is doing.
GRE isn’t all that important so long as the math score is very good (and that section is super easy).
I’ll also point out that it isn’t uncommon to have PhD programs that do not require any sort of MS to get in. That will vary by school but if your son decides he wants a PhD, he can likely find a place that will let him go straight at it. That won’t change the career path other than taking perhaps one fewer semesters.
I’d absolutely suggest going somewhere else for graduate school. There aren’t a whole lot of reasons to stay put.
I agree that an MS is not always necessary and getting a M.S. first followed by a Ph.D. at another university will definitely take a longer time than going straight to a Ph.D. As for funding, don’t go to a Ph.D. program in engineering without full funding for your entire time there. It is just too long to try to self-fund. The trick is to find the strongest program that fits your interests (no point in going to a top program if no one there is doing the research you are excited about) and that offers you both tuition and stipend.
However, and this is a big one, don’t discard less selective programs if they have a professor who is well known and doing the research you like. Getting a good position after graduation depends a lot on your thesis advisor. There are plenty of very good researchers who are not at the most selective schools. If this is the case about your son’s current advisor it might be a good reason to stay but in general, it is best to move on to a different school for a graduate degree.
Thank you for your replies. S will be home for TG so I will share this with him then. He will be applying to other schools but is happy that he has one sure option although funding remains a question. To clarify his school’s engineering program is well respected and has great employment stats but their environmental engineering in the civil program is small and ranked lower than many of their other engineering programs in USNWP.
@turbo93: I tried looking for admission stats on gradcafe. I saw admission results that people submitted but no actual stats/criteria, am I missing something? What is a “directional state”. Do you have any advise for a strong application and getting funding?
@boneh3ad : Good to know that the GRE consideration is mainly on math results. I expect those will be strong. It sounds like for prep the math section is where he needs to be. Is there a need to prep beyond math?
@boneh3ad and @xraymancs: Do you have any suggestions for identifying schools that have programs that go directly from undergrad to Phd?
Other questions: Aside from the strength of the program is there a reason to do Grad/Phd in a different school than undergrad? Do you have any suggestion for researching programs to determine which ones will best meet objectives? Do you have any suggestions for acquiring funding?
Thank you!
I suppose it depends on how insecure you are about your test-taking abilities. Sadly, I prepped for it all and I regret it. I should have saved the time and money and just used the practice tests that you can get just to familiarize myself with the format. It was almost comically easy (at least on the math side; on the verbal side I think they made up words).
Probably the majority of US schools will allow a direct-to-PhD route these days.
I will answer your question with another question. Why would you want to stay where you are for grad school instead of going elsewhere?
Try to determine what sort of area you hope to study and then browse the websites of schools that interest you for professors that study that sort of thing. Ask your current professors for those subjects which schools they respect. Browse the journals in that area for papers on the topics you think might interest you and note the schools producing the most interesting articles.
Funding for a MS degree is kind of a crapshoot and will vary from one school to another and one department to another in a particular school. Shoot, it very well may even vary from one advisor to another. For a PhD, if you find a school that doesn’t provide funding, then you should immediately remove that school from your list. Basically all reputable schools provide PhD funding.
You generate the admission statistics When you see results with a little diamond shape next to them, hover your mouse over the diamond and admission stats will be revealed. When my older girl was applying for grad architecture I decided to see where she could get with her (pretty good) stats. So I went thru three years worth of gradcafe, and wrote down the admissions for which there were numbers (GPA, GRE) and admission decision and school name and any funding. I did that only for the schools she was applying and above. Some interesting patterns began to appear, i.e. the Uber-Ivy Leagues (Princeton) would not admit anyone below some super-high numbers, most schools would admit with decent stats (and assume good portfolio), and there was a gray area for specific GPA/GRE. Now, in Architecture, GPA and GRE are about as meaningful as what color undershirt one wears - a bad portfolio won’t be fixed by out-of-this-world GPA or GRE. Vice versa is tricky, and I’m quite convinced that GRE may not play a role in admissions (heck, 6 of 14 schools did not ask for it) but it plays a role in funding.
Directional State schools are schools one ‘level’ below the flagship. In Illinois the flagship will be UIUC and the directional states will be SIUE and SIUC. Funding may be easier there but there is less of it - at Purdue for example there was lots of funding but getting in is harder. In other words, apply everywhere. For PhD future plans going to a recognizable school even at full pay may be worth it because at the PhD level there’s lots of funding if one gets admitted, and they may not admit at all without funding. For PhD, again, to be honest, I would stick with state flagships or major regional type schools (say, in Ohio, OSU and U Cincy from public schools).
As @boneh3ad pointed out, PhD in STEM == funding otherwise run! That’s not ALWAYS the case in other majors but in STEM that’s generally true. GradCafe has some heart wrenching stories of humanities kids with stellar undergrad and GRE and not getting admitted to PhD programs because of funding.
How do you go about funding? Apply to LOTS of places. Not 2-3. Probably a dozen. I’m sure the College Board has a water cooler or vending machine named after me in their corporate HQ with what we’ve spent. Be involved in research. That was my ticket in grad school. I did independent research with a prof as an undergrad and before I graduated he asked me to stay there for MS and join his team. Chi-Ching!. Find out what schools have faculty in your area of interest, look up papers they wrote, and the like, and specifically indicate you are interested in Prof XYZ because of his work in Dilithium Crystal growing or some such.
Strong application? GPA over 3.5 hopefully, and GRE over 155 minimum. Independent projects, resume polishing, that sort of thing. A good undergrad school. Important courses. In architecture portfolio is king so it’s easier to show. Anything show and tell basically.
@boneh3ad and @turbo93 have pretty much said it all. I usually advise my students to apply to less than 10 schools though. You only need one that is a relatively sure bet and will provide funding. Your S should talk to his professors and ask for recommendations. They might even be able to make a call and help raise some interest in your S at the target school. Usually professors understand that a student wants to go elsewhere for graduate school but as@turbo93 mentions, if there is a possibility to get a MS in a short time with funding where he is, that might be a good option to make his application even stronger with proven coursework and research.
I completely agree that you need to have funding for a Ph.D. in STEM. If they don’t offer you full funding, they really don’t want you. If you are looking for MS funding the surest bet is a program that does not have a Ph.D., like the California State Universities. Unless he really needs to beef up his application, he should focus on Ph.D programs though.
@Turbo, Thanks for the info on Gradcafe, now I see how it works. It will be helpful to look at after he tests. Thanks also for your thoughts on generating a strong application. We may have further questions once the applications are rolling.
@boneh3ad, thank you for the advice on searching schools and the tip about applying for a Ph.d directly from undergrad. Don’t know if he will do that but he didnt realized it would even be an option. As for reasons to stay at the current school they would be probable funding, and opportunity to continue with research in an area he is very interested in but that doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention in the US. The school is a state flagship. I don’t know how you really know the strength of a program. The environmental program isn’t ranked at all in USNWP. I don’t know if that is significant or if there are other more reliable gauges. In any case he is looking at other schools but isn’t ruling this one out.
@xraymancs: Thank you for your input as well. Since you mentioned " advising your students" I’m wondering who your students are; family, interns or do you work in an academic setting?
One more question is if anyone had advice about selecting profs for reccommendations? Since he is in a large university he doesn’t have a strong connection with many profs. He does with the research prof but beyond that, while he has excellent grades and has taken advantage of office hours from time to time he doesn’t feel like his profs really know him. How big a problem is this?
Thank you again, your input is really appreciated!
It’s got to be a pretty compelling reason to stay put for grad school in my opinion. On a personal level, there’s so much more to learn by moving elsewhere and getting different perspectives.
@spectrum2 - I am a professor of physics at Illinois Tech. I have been here for over 30 years and have advised many undergraduates over that time. I often suggest schools they may not have considered and occasionally, I make a call to get a student into a program after the deadline if other options don’t pan out. I don’t like doing this so I try to get them to apply to a solid safety that they still would like to attend. As I have said on this forum before, the name of the school you attend for a Ph.D. is not as important as your research advisor. I think we all can agree that IIT is not a “top 20” program in physics but my students have all done well in finding jobs in industry, as post-docs, or at National Labs.
My PhD advisor got his PhD at IIT back in the day and has certainly done well with it. He’s NAE, after all.
@xraymancs Great advice to apply to schools that don’t have PHd. We did not know this and my son only wants to get a MS and funding is important. He contacted a few professors at the schools he is targeting since he does want to get a thesis MS but they couldn’t say now what help they need next fall. However, they encouraged him to apply. I think the schools he applied to all have Phds so I will have to pass this info to him though it might be too late to apply to more schools. Im not sure when the deadlines are.
Interesting point that I wish I had asked them abut further. Over TG my son got to talk to a couple of friends who are professors but neither in engineering. They both advocated for him attending a school that does have a Ph.d program. Their thinking was that it was important to go to a school that has lots of funding for research for it to be respected for future connections. They felt that most schools that didn’t offer a Ph.d are also likely to have limited research funding. Just wondering about thoughts on this perspective…One thing they did stress though was that wherever you go the student create the value of the experience by what they put into it.
We also talked about making contacts with profs that he might be interested in doing research for. The suggestion was to read their CV and research and contact them by email and then possibly via Skype if distance is a factor. Are there additional thoughts about creating relationships with professors that might be research mentors at schools the student is interested in attending, especially when the school is far away?
@spectrum2 - Yes, of course schools with Ph.D. programs will have more research funding but that is usually reserved for Ph.D. students, not M.S. students. The other questions is whether employers really care if you have a Masters degree with a thesis or just a professional degree. You will likely get a very lively discussion about that on this forum but my contention is that the thesis is not so important for employment with a M.S. Companies will hire engineers with Ph.D.s for certain jobs but those with a M.S. (even if they have a thesis) will not be qualified for these positions. Instead, with a M.S. or M.Eng. there will be different kinds of jobs available and it is not totally clear to me if there is an advantage to having the Thesis.
Of course the bigger name, more selective programs will have better contacts for jobs but you will likely have to self-fund the Masters degree. It is a limited time and cost so it might well be worth it but if you are not in a position to take out loans or pay outright for it, a program which can provide funding as a TA might be preferable. YMMV
I guess it comes back to @Turbo 's advice to cast a wide net. My son isn’t positive at this point about the Ph.d but wants to keep the option open. He doesn’t think he’s prepared for the Ph.d program in environmental engineerind now because his degree will be in civil with a specialization in environmental but he doesn’t think he will have enough foundation to go directly to a Ph.d program. At the moment he wants to do research and I expect this is what our friends had in mind when they spoke about going to a school with a Phd program. Funding is very important so hopefully it will fall into place.
If I am understanding what I have heard while changing schools for MS has advantages it is more efficient and advantageous to go from Masters to Phd at the same school. Do I have this right?
One more thing…my son is metting with a couple of his profs this week to discuss applying to grad school at current university and elsewhere. He asked me to suggest questions to ask them so I’m checking to see if you can suggest any questions for him to ask.
I would argue that one of the purposes of the application process is for the department to give their opinion on that very issue. I would say that a large chunk of admitted PhD students, perhaps a majority, are underprepared for their area of research, and programs generally have some leeway built-in to account for that fact.
There are relatively few advantages of getting your MS at one school and a PhD at another - mainly they have to do with improving your resume to get into a “better” school for the PhD, or with being able to run away from a program that is a poor fit, both relatively rare occurrences.
Conversely, getting your MS and PhD at the same school has a LOT of advantages. You should be able to complete a year or more faster. You avoid all the time and expense of admissions and relocation and familiarizing yourself with a new school and area. You get better continuity in your research and in your coursework. And perhaps the biggest one, better funding - If you go in as a PhD candidate, you have a much better chance of funding (and often more of it, too!) than if you come in as an MS student only.
Here’s the thing with MS-PhD at the same school - if you want to go to Academia Inc, depending on major jobs may be an issue unless you went to a super school. This is personal experience mind you. You will always compete for jobs as a Phd (or so it looks to me) at one level below (academic reputation wise) as where you graduated. So if you went to Ivy League U, you’ll be good to teach in a flagship state, if you went to a flagship state for Phd then teach in a directional, and so on. Again, that’s my perception. In industry, a PhD is not necessarily as useful unless specifically required. You may move to a better school to work but not immediately, at least. I have two MS degrees (could have gone for a PhD but decided to learn yet another discipline) and that has served me well. Plus I did not want to play the publish or perish game.
My daughter is in a top but not Ivy type school for her Masters in Architecture. She has full funding as a teaching assistant. But if she continues there for PhD she may or may not do as well in Academia Inc (her final destination). Now, can you argue a Yale PhD is worth it if you pay $200k for it? probably not, because you can’t pay that back on an Arch professor’s salary. So she could well stay put until her cat decides he’s had enough of the place (he’s a big cat).
The other thing with very competitive PhD programs is that there’s always funding but number of spots is limited. That’s a big thing to worry about.
No offense but I’m not sure someone without a PhD should be dispensing a whole lot of over-generalizations about the PhD job market. There are a lot more options than just academia. Industry actually does hire a large number of engineering PhDs, as do government labs and research centers.
Your model also implies that no one can ever be faculty at the tip top schools and ignores the very real effect of having a well-known advisor at a lower-tier school.
Also, the paying for a PhD is a non-issue in engineering. No one pays their way through a PhD. The get paid a (paltry) stipend that means you likely aren’t going deeper into debt, but you have to put life on hold a bit longer.