<p>Can a masters degree ever hurt you in terms of job prospects? Will employers be unwilling to hire you because they would have to pay extra money or think you are too overqualified? I am going to be a freshmen next year and saw a opportunity to get a BS/MS within 5 years. I was considering this, but was not sure if I should get it or not</p>
<p>I believe this is generally attached more to PhDs. Before you go for the 5 year program, though, think about what you want to gain from it. A master’s with no experience has similar job prospects to a bachelor’s in many cases. In the long run it can help you out, and it definitely won’t limit you in industry.</p>
<p>Generally, no.</p>
<p>The only situation where I think a masters would hurt you is if its in an unrelated field and thus in the intervening time your skills get “rusty.”</p>
<p>The cost and lost salary is about the most painful loss from a Masters. It’s pretty helpful overall.</p>
<p>MBAs tend to have a reputation to be obtained by those without direction IF they get them right out of undergrad. Go for work experience first and you’re good.</p>
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How does this pertain to the OP? He/she is talking about an MS, not an MBA. Entirely different.</p>
<p>I myself am BS/MS’ing right now (last year). As others have said, the only downsides I’ve seen are the cost & loss of working time. But in my case, it seems worth it. So many jobs want that checkmark that you have the degree just to weed people out in my field. Plus, I’m doing it in 9 semesters (not 10), and I’ll have a years worth of internships/co-op’s when I graduate next May. Furthermore, my school is covering 60% of tuition for the 9th semester. Pretty dang sweet, in my situation.</p>
<p>So long story short, play it by ear. You haven’t even started your first year yet - your plans might make a complete 180 before you even have a chance to realistically consider any form of grad school. Don’t stress just quite yet :)</p>
<p>My company prefers MS degrees by a small amount. Your MS degree is considered about 1.5 to 2 years worth of experience over a BS. You would get a salary offer commisserate with the extra experience. </p>
<p>The question you have to ask is whether it is worth it? Come to work and a couple of years later go get your MS on the company’s tab (for tuition but not living expenses). You may even have a better idea of what to study for your MS degree.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that it may hurt you if you’re applying for a lower skill level job. For instance, if I were looking for a web developer to do relatively simple things, I would think twice before hiring a candidate with a graduate degree from a top ranked computer science program. I don’t doubt that such a candidate could do a good job, but I would worry that he or she will quickly get bored and move on to more lucrative opportunities. </p>
<p>Of course, you can always omit your graduate degrees from your resume…</p>
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<p>Of course, if the job market a bachelor’s degree graduation is bad enough that you get no job offers, but you get into a funded graduate program, that may be a good place to go while hoping for the job market to recover.</p>
<p>At our kids’ engineering program, they let the kids apply for the master’s in the 5th year in the 3rd year of engineering. That makes more sense to me. Our S elected to take the job he was offered in Feb of SR year instead of sticking around to get his master’s in EE. He felt & still feels that it makes a lot more sense to get a master’s after he knows what he wants to study.</p>
<p>Another good thing is the some employers (including S’s) will help pay for education, as long as it is related to your job. He’s considering his options. He’s glad he got job offers but wishes there were more EE in his job that he could apply.</p>
<p>Johnson, I missed that, I was in a rush to leave.</p>
<p>One possibility where getting a master’s degree can be harmful to your job prospects is the opposite of the situation described in #9. This is the situation where you graduate with a bachelor’s degree during a good job market, but then go on to graduate school, graduating with a master’s degree during a bad job market. An example would be a civil engineering major graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 2007 and a master’s degree in 2009. While the one who went to work in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree would still have been at risk of losing his/her job, keeping the job that one has is typically not as difficult as getting a job from a position of unemployment.</p>
<p>A masters doesn’t hurt at all in engineering, it helps, no question. In pure science however, having a terminal masters is terrible.</p>