<p>At my former employer, we only have two classes of engineer. BS & MS are on equal footing. PhDs are the highest paid new hires.</p>
<p>On the subject of taking time in industry to decide if it is for you. You have the rest of your life, or until your wife/husband/partner decides that they are tired of you to be married. I personally don’t care if I have kids. Buying a house can happen at any time. My manager had three kids, and a husband when she quit her job and went to grad school. As my grandmother said, “you have the rest of your life to pay bills and work.” Really what is three years? You can relax, pay down debt, enjoy life, take a vacation, and really focus on what you want to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to study in grad school initially, until I did work in different fields, and actually saw the research going on. The dean of Meharry Medical School worked at my former company for 6 years, before she decided that she didn’t want to be an engineer anymore, and decided to go to medical school. People always leave companies to go to law school, or started their own businesses, etc. </p>
<p>Also, at my former employer a capstone project is counted as a research project. A capstone project should be a research project anyway. Any capstone worth its salt should be an independant, or team research project. That is the way it is in industry. At my college, capstone projects for all engineering majors. Engineers don’t really do research in industry, they are mostly project managers. When we recruited engineers, we specifically asked about the details of their capstone project. If we determined that he/she played no significant part in the project, or didn’t know what they were talking about, then their applications were tossed.</p>
<p>You do understand what “research” is, right? It’s not just an independent project. It’s work done to develop and prove new theory that currently doesn’t exist in the body of knowledge of the field. Applying existing knowledge to a new problem isn’t research, it’s a project. Again, there’s nothing wrong with a project and you can prove many aspects of your personality that are useful to industry, but graduate schools and R&D positions want to see research, not projects.</p>
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<p>It will depend on the school. At many schools, the coursework-only students and the research MS students take courses together. The difference is that the coursework-only students will take 30-36 hours of classes to earn a degree and the research students will take 24 hours or so of classes + a thesis. If your goal is a research position, obviously there’s a different in training. But for most professionals, either work well.</p>
<p>4 years in industry, $30MM produced for my business unit, presented at my company’s international symposium twice (Ohio, & Germany), lead manufacturing and coating responsibilites at international manufacturing facilites for my business unit, (youngest do do such). 10 awards for Product Development and Process Analytical Chemistry, stock awards, lead key initiatives for my business unit, and I turn 27 in September. So, no I don’t really know what “research” is. That is Research & Development in industry.</p>
So BS=MS because you have a one-bit grading system. Ok. Interesting choice. Get that one promotion in your life and you’re done, huh?</p>
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Actually, buying a house usually CAN’T happen at any time unless you want to lose your shirt or still be paying a mortgage when you are 80. And (from experience) going to grad school with a wife and kids is immensely harder than going it alone. Can it be done? Sure, I’m doing it right now. Would it have been easier and better had I done this before I was married, or at least before I had my girls? Darn tootin it would.</p>
<p>General rule of thumb about graduate school that I have learned:</p>
<p>Do you know exactly what you want to work in and do? I mean EXACTLY, e.g. “I want to work in R & D engineering” is not specific enough. “I want to work in R & D engineering in automotive” is not specific enough. “I want to work in R & D engineering in automotive suspension” may be specific enough. If you DON"T know what you want to work in, go get a job and figure it out. If you do know what you want to work in, go get that job. If you can’t get that job (the field is too small to find openings, not good qualifications, etc.) then consider gradaute school for that specific field.</p>
<p>IMO, do not do a MS unless it is 1.) paid for 2.) opens up field-specific opportunities you did not have before OR 3.) part of BSMS program and 1 or 2.</p>
<p>Getting an MS solely for the added salary when the tuition is not covered by your current employer is silly.</p>
<p>FOR PHD:</p>
<p>If you are truly passionate about one area and know you want to work in that field and that field is difficult to get into / heavily research oriented, a PhD might be worth it.</p>
<p>If you’re decision comes down to financials, then you shouldn’t go to grad school. If the decision comes down to your enjoyment doing your job, then you’re on the right path…</p>
<p>I definitely can not say with any certainty a specific field I want to stay in. What I can say is that I am very interested in the research I am involved with currently. Consequently, I can see myself working in a field related to heat transfer and energy systems in the long-term. My plan as of now is to decide what I aspire to do by the second semester of my senior year at which point I will weigh my options (i.e. the grad schools I have gotten accepted to and their corresponding fellowships with job offers and their corresponding pay, location, e.t.c.) and make a final decision. Note* I am not sure when admissions responses are available and therefore the aforementioned statements are made under the assumption that I will have received word by the second semester of my senior year. Does this seem like a reasonable idea?</p>
<p>Also* When does one take the GRE? Is the GRE similar to the ACT/SAT and therefore a standardized test? Does the exam test you in all areas?</p>
<p>You take the GRE sometime either in the summer before your senior year or during the fall of your senior year. It’s pretty close to the SAT in that you have a math, verbal, and writing section (though they’ve changed the format a little since I’ve taken it, so I can’t say for sure what it’s like now). You generally apply for grad school by the beginning of the new year and should hear back in Jan/Feb. Visits are in late February through March and I think you have to make a decision by April 15 or something like that.</p>
<p>I would say that is what the majority of people end up doing who go to grad school right from undergrad…there’s a problem though: you’re applying to programs before you know what you specifically want to research in. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of people do it that way (apply to programs based on rankings, or general research being done) and end up happy with their choice. However, there is also a much greater risk of realizing you’re doing research you really aren’t passionate about.</p>
<p>If you’re passionate about your research and like what you’re doing, I don’t think you would regret grad school. Make sure you research the programs you apply to. There might not be any professor doing research that truly interests you. Conversely, there might be a lesser known school doing the exact research you seek.</p>
<p>Always stay open to new directions while keeping an eye on your final goal. You can always take a couple extra steps to get there.</p>
<p>While I don’t know about the bearability of having existing children while a graduate student, it does seem to me that having new children is highly facilitated by being a graduate student, at least, relative to having a job. After all, how many jobs will provide you with the time flexibility comparable to the lifestyle of a graduate student? {Granted, being a graduate student involves much hard work, but you enjoy relative freedom to choose when to put in the work.} How many jobs will allow women to take an entire year off to bear a child, with the guarantee that she can return afterwards and fullly reclaim her former official status? {Granted, such a female graduate student might have to change advisors and her scholastic reputation within the research community might be marred, and her funding during that year might be suspended, but her full official student status will be reactivated when she returns.} Even the Family & Medical Leave Act mandates that employers provide only 3 months of leave, which is negligible. </p>
<p>About the only other comparable opportunity I know that is so family friendly is to become academic faculty itself. Heck, I know one woman who, as a finishing graduate student, specifically timed her pregnancy to give birth precisely when her new assistant professorship position started the following summer. Granted, she was not trying to cheat anybody, as she was already visibly pregnant when she was on the academic job market, so every school who gave her a job offer (of which there were many) knew what was going to happen. Nevertheless, she started her faculty career by immediately going on maternity leave…and at full pay. And since this was a faculty position at a top-ranked business school, that meant that she was being paid a year’s salary of ~$200k plus full medical coverage to have a baby. How many private sector jobs provide anything comparable?</p>