<p>I'm planning on obtaining a phD in Electrical Engineering. Currently I am a senior in high school. I will be enrolled full time for the next 4 years, and will immediately attend grad school upon exiting undergrad.</p>
<p>So, how many years of education am I looking at to obtain a full blown phd?</p>
<p>I've heard 4 yrs undergrad, 2 yrs masters, 2 years phd for a total 8 yrs of college, but I'm not sure at all.</p>
<p>More years for a PhD than two. Count on at least three or four... Maybe more.</p>
<p>What, may we ask, are your ultimate career goals...? Academia? Research?</p>
<p>I went straight though and it took me 9 1/2 years total. Worth every minute.</p>
<p>OMG, 10 years?!</p>
<p>My ultimate career goal is to get a good job, a really good job. I would like to work in designing and building new electronics. I always figured that more education = better job.</p>
<p>I guess in a way my aspirations also involve research. I would like to work innovatively in my life, and engineer new methods to make everyday life easier.</p>
<p>If I'm not going to be a teacher, is it even worth getting a PhD?
I'm 16 right now, and in a couple months will be 17 (i know, im young...), and would like to be working by the time I'm 24. </p>
<p>I'm applying for a program which, if accepted, will allow me to accelerate through my levels of education. I will be immersed in research and internships for all of undergrad, and will essentially "skip" masters and obtain a PhD in shorter time; but the college doesnt specify how MUCH shorter time, so I needed a ballpark.</p>
<p>Ahh. =)
Yeah, that's kind of why I figured you wanted to get a PhD... A masters is pretty much all you need in order to do cool electronics design stuff. A masters can take one or two years, typically, and you can end up with a really good job. Just get your degrees from some really good programs and get some really good recommendations from some really good professors, along with your really good GPA, of course.</p>
<p>A PhD is good, if you want to do things like chip architecture or super-crazy research, or if you want to be a professor. My brother's a senior in college and is going for his PhD in electrical engineering, because he wants to end up doing specialized chip architecture and super-crazy research (not into academia whatsoever). So yeah, it could be helpful for you, but I personally wouldn't lock myself into a PhD program at such a young age... You might come to the conclusion that in order to do the specific sorts of electrical engineering things that you want to do, you don't actually need a doctorate.</p>
<p>Because doctorates take forever.</p>
<p>(My husband's about to finish his PhD in music composition. He's been in school for over 13 years now... <sigh>...)</sigh></p>
<p>BS-Phd for an engineer takes, on average about 8-10 years. 4 for BS, 4-6 for MS/PHD. It seems like a long time, but it may be worth it. It all depends on what type of job you want. If you see yourself happy in a corporate research lab or being a professor at a university, then yes a PhD will let you work on fairly innovative electronics with a decent salary. But BS and MS engineers innovate too. More than that, they, to an extent, have higher mobility in industry - in terms of management or positions they can take. A PhD indicates a high degree of specialization, which can make you overqualified for certain jobs. There are trade-offs to consider.</p>
<p>However, these aren't things you should be worried about now. Go to college, try research in undergrad, see how it goes, then decide how far you want to take it.</p>
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I'm applying for a program which, if accepted, will allow me to accelerate through my levels of education. I will be immersed in research and internships for all of undergrad, and will essentially "skip" masters and obtain a PhD in shorter time; but the college doesnt specify how MUCH shorter time, so I needed a ballpark.
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<p>It's generally frowned upon to get your PhD from the same place that you got your BS from, and if you go to a different grad school than your undergrad, your MS degree generally doesn't transfer over and you have to retake the classes/redo your qualification exams. The only real way to save time in getting a PhD is to graduate from undergrad early or work extra hard during your PhD research years. Generally you don't get a MS and then a PhD, the MS is just something you pick up along the way to your PhD in your graduate years.</p>
<p>I spent three and a half years in undergrad and the average amount of time spent by people in my research group prior to graduating is around five and a half years (including first year/two getting the MS).</p>
<p>wow thanks for the replies everybody.</p>
<p>I found out that thru the program there are about 7 years of schooling before I can get a PhD.</p>
<p>However, aibarr and merper68 make good points...there are trade offs and i do understand that lower levels of education could give me more versatility/options.</p>
<p>I will definitely do some re-evaluating...</p>
<p>No need to decide right now, either... If you decide not to go for the PhD program right now, it doesn't mean that you can't get a PhD... You can decide later. (Might be best... You're still really young! You're a teenager, for cryin' out loud! You have a societal obligation to be completely uncertain about what you want out of life right now! ;) )</p>
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I've heard 4 yrs undergrad, 2 yrs masters, 2 years phd for a total 8 yrs of college, but I'm not sure at all.
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More years for a PhD than two. Count on at least three or four... Maybe more.
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<p>Well, actually, c00kie's timeline is about right: it's about 2 more years post-masters. Of course I assume that the masters means that you no longer have to do coursework and can proceed right to candidacy. </p>
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I always figured that more education = better job.
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<p>Well, you'll quickly be disabused of this notion. There's a joke in the PhD ranks that the deeper you wade in the PhD waters, the more useless you become to the market. But that comes from a strong element of truth regarding what a PhD is all about: completing a PhD basically means to become an expert one a very narrow topic, and if employers don't really care about that topic, then you're probably not going to improve your employment opportunities. </p>
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If I'm not going to be a teacher, is it even worth getting a PhD?
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<p>Generally speaking, if you don't intend to have a research job of some type - whether that's research in private industry or in academia - then a PhD is probably not worth it. </p>
<p>There are some exceptions. For example, I would say that if you come from a poor country with few employment prospects, then getting a PhD in a developed country (especially the USA) is a killer deal. After all, your PhD stipend will pay you far more than what you would have gotten if you had just stayed at home. Plus you'll have the opportunity to establish immigration/residency and perhaps ultimately citizenship. {That's why I think many of those foreign PhD students are making out like bandits relative to what they would have had by just staying home.} </p>
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It's generally frowned upon to get your PhD from the same place that you got your BS from,
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<p>Depends on where you get it, and since we're talking about engineering here, I think it should be noted that numerous engineering schools seem to be unusually receptive to their own undergrads. For example, there's a certain tech school in Cambridge Mass whose engineering grad programs absolutely love taking its own engineering undergrads, to the point that it calls such people "cubed students", in the sense that they got their BS, MS, and PhD all at the same place. {In fact, a not insignificant number of these 'cubed students' stay there to become professors, hence one could say they earn the appellation: "of the 4th power", which basically means that they've been at that school for their whole lives since they were 18 years old.}</p>
<p>Similarly, certain schools in Pasadena and Palo Alto also seem to similarly love taking their own eng undergrads.</p>
<p>^^
good post.</p>
<p>I thought that MIT was known for NOT taking its own undergrads into its grad programs.</p>
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Well, actually, c00kie's timeline is about right: it's about 2 more years post-masters. Of course I assume that the masters means that you no longer have to do coursework and can proceed right to candidacy.
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<p>That's... only true in a few places. My brother, the PhD applicant (and admittee! woohoo!) in electrical engineering, was given the estimate of 8 years post-masters at Stanford, 3 years post-masters at Rice. MIT and UCLA both hedged on how long it would take.</p>
<p>8 Years post-MS at Stanford?!! No wonder half the PhDs drop to start their own company.</p>
<p>you don't have to get the PHD right out of school. im under the impression that most PHD students are in their 30s working for almost a decade prior to that.</p>
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im under the impression that most PHD students are in their 30s working for almost a decade prior to that.
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<p>...yeah, working on their PhDs.</p>
<p>Some work a little bit, most of the people I know (former professors included) for two or three years tops, between their undergrad and grad work, but a lot of them work straight through. They look old because they've been there a long time. (Apologies to my dissertation-writing husband...)</p>
<p>i think that some people here don't really understand what a PhD requires. There is a credit requirement, but that is usually completed within a few years. The research portion can take anywhere from a few more years up to a decade, depending on what you research. A PhD program is very different in this respect to a bachelors or masters program, where you take X number of credits then you get a degree. There is not some set time that you get the degree in.</p>
<p>On another note, if you want a quick research degree, schools in the UK generally have 3 year D.Phil programs. These are just research degrees, without any course requirements (you only take the courses you need to complete your research). Note that these aren't entirely equivalent to a PhD however.</p>
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I thought that MIT was known for NOT taking its own undergrads into its grad programs.
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<p>Uh, not only are they absolutely infamous for it - indeed, MIT may be arguably the most 'incestuous' school in the country (although perhaps that 'other' school in Cambridge Mass is even more incestuous) - but MIT actually has grad programs that takes only its own undergrads. In particular, the EECS MEng program is exclusive only to MIT undergrads, and only MIT EECS undergrads at that. If you didn't go to MIT - or even if you did, but didn't major in EECS - you can't even apply to that program. </p>
<p>But anyway, the point is that far and away the most popular grad school for MIT undergrads to attend is MIT itself. The following pdf demonstrates that a whopping 137 MIT graduating seniors are staying there for grad school: literally more than 5x the number who are going anywhere else, including that 'other' local school. In fact, that's greater than 50% of the number of all of the people going to the next 8 most popular destinations combined. Granted, not all of them are going to PhD programs, but nevertheless I think it's safe to say that many MIT grad programs must be highly welcoming to their own undergrads. </p>
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That's... only true in a few places. My brother, the PhD applicant (and admittee! woohoo!) in electrical engineering, was given the estimate of 8 years post-masters at Stanford
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<p>That's really odd because others I know who had gotten into Stanford EE were given a normative time of around 5 years, and *post-bachelor's * at that. I don't know what's going on with your husband: maybe he was recruited by an unusually slow-graduating research group. </p>
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you don't have to get the PHD right out of school. im under the impression that most PHD students are in their 30s working for almost a decade prior to that.
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<p>That impression is wrong: many (in fact, probably most) engineering PhD students came in straight from undergrad, with minimal experience, and some others may have had up to 2-4 years work experience, but certainly not 10. </p>
<p>As a proof of concept, you can simply pull up the CV's of random engineering grad students and notice that many of them have never actually worked in industry at all, or have done so for only a few years.</p>
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Quote:
That's... only true in a few places. My brother, the PhD applicant (and admittee! woohoo!) in electrical engineering, was given the estimate of 8 years post-masters at Stanford
That's really odd because others I know who had gotten into Stanford EE were given a normative time of around 5 years, and post-bachelor's at that. I don't know what's going on with your husband: maybe he was recruited by an unusually slow-graduating research group.
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As a proof of concept, you can simply pull up the CV's of random engineering grad students and notice that many of them have never actually worked in industry at all, or have done so for only a few years.
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<p>Allow me to reinforce the point. Here is a link to a bunch of homepages of Stanford EE grad students.</p>
<p>Stanford</a> University - EE Department Student Webpages</p>
<p>Now, granted, not all of them are PhD students (some are MS students). Nevertheless, if Stanford is quoting an 8-year-post-MS number to prospective students, then logic would dictate that you would find some current PhD students there who have been at Stanford for 8 years or more years after master's (and if 8 years is the expected figure, then, logically, some people should end up spending more than 8 years) . Now, perhaps it could be argued that those people who are taking such a long time to graduate are less likely to publish a homepage. But you'd still think you'd find a few such long-timers, especially if that 8 year figure were indeed an 'expected' time frame, as opposed to people who were taking far longer than expected. </p>
<p>Now, I didn't search through every single page, but of the ones I did go through, I didn't find anybody who spent 8+ years post-masters. The slowest guy I could find is Pablo Molinero-Fernandez, who admittedly did take 7 years post-master's to get his PhD. But that's still under 8 years.</p>
<p>Now, again, I didn't search through every single link, so maybe there are some people there that had been or still are lingering at Stanford for 8 years post-master's. But if that's truly the norm, then logic would dictate that you would find many such people.</p>