I was planning to get a 5th year masters until very recently so let’s just say I’m slightly panicked at the moment. My plan right now is to apply for the 5th year masters as a back up (basically everyone gets in) and apply to 3 high tier PhD programs in my field to see if it’s worth pursuing the PhD path. I really want to work on future tech for devices that will solve the decline in Moore’s Law, so working in a lower tier university, unless they have a professor who’s doing such a thing, is not so appealing. Please let me know if someone comes to mind and I’d be super excited to learn more about their work!
Stats:
Undergrad in EE at Stanford with a planned focus in digital design
GPA 3.7/4
GRE 334 (Q170 V 164) writing 5
I’ve published a paper as a second author and am working on a second research project at the moment, both are unrelated to my interest however. (One in EE for biosensors and one in ME for virtual reality and haptic feedback)
I’m pretty active extracurricular wise, am TAing an intro course in my focus and did an internship at Intel this summer in my focus
I’m also female if it makes any difference nowadays
Recommendations:
I’ve got 3 faculty, two professors who I did research with and the professor I’m TAing under
Schools I want to apply to:
CMU
Berkeley
MIT
I have a professor in mind for Cal as it’s my top choice, but haven’t done much in researching the others yet. These are the leaders in comp arch so hopefully some further digging will reveal someone.
Do you think it’s worth the time and effort to apply for the PhDs? I thought for a long time I wanted to do Bio-EE but now that I’ve settled on something else, I’ve realized I need a lot more expertise than what a master’s can give me. I’m afraid I haven’t done enough resume building to get me into a program of my choice however.
Apply. You have good credentials, and the fact that your research is in a different area is not a big problem - you have shown that academically you can excel in the new area and you have also shown that you can do quality research, and there is no reason to suspect that you would suddenly struggle with research in the new area.
That having been said, these are uber-competitive programs, so also apply to masters programs, at Stanford and elsewhere, and also to less-competitive PhD programs in your desired area. I can’t tell you what they are, not my field. Don’t apply anywhere you don’t want to go and don’t apply anywhere you cannot name potential advisors and research projects.
How will applying to PhD programs tell you if it’s worth pursuing a PhD? Simply gaining admission to a PhD program is not going to tell you that. You have to make that decision before you apply.
A couple of things:
-It’s common to think you can’t work in research without a PhD - I thought so too - but that’s patently untrue. There are lots of master’s-level people who are doing and even directing research, especially in industry. Even BS-level folks can do research support and shaping under the supervision of a MS or PhD level researcher. There are a few jobs for which a PhD in engineering might be really valuable - being a professor, of course, is one of them. What kind of career do you want to have? You should answer that question before you enter a PhD program.
-Especially in engineering, you don’t even have to work in traditional ‘research’ to work on better technology. It entirely depends on how you want to advance our knowledge in tech, but there are lots of engineers who are working on hard problems at tech companies who aren’t necessarily researchers per se (their job title isn’t ‘researcher’).
If you are unsure, the best thing you can actually do is work for a while and do some more discovery about what you actually want to do. PhDs are long and will take you out of the workforce for 4 to 6 years. In that time, you could potentially be working on what you want to do and make quadruple what you’d make as a PhD student. And if you’ve already interned at Intel, then you have the potential to go back there with your BS or the 5-year MS and still do really great work and influence your area of interest.
At the very least, the PhD isn’t going anywhere, so you can always go back to get a PhD later if you decide you need one.
Assuming you want to pursuit a PhD, I think you are a good candidate.
I would add to the list:
UCLA
UCSD
Univ. of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
Santa Clara Univ.
and of course Stanford Univ.
It is a conventional wisdom that one should not attend graduate school at the undergraduate university. I disagree with this so-called “wisdom,” especially if the university happens to be one of the tops in the field.