how many years is graduate school?

<p>IMO, it makes no sense financially to get a PhD to work in industry. My friends who started working after getting their MS EE are now making $85k in Silicon Valley, which approaches six figures in total compensation if you include bonuses and stock options. PhDs start out making around $105k, which is probably less that you would be making after 4-5 years of work experience.</p>

<p>That's starting salary? That's pretty good for an MS...</p>

<p>Yes, starting salaries. It looks like the economy is picking up this year. My friends even turned down some six figure offers from small no-name companies outside of California.</p>

<p>Crazy. I'm starting to like Eng., so if I could make lots of money... that would be great. Law school is looking worse and worse as time goes on.</p>

<p>I'm thinking about going into Chemical Engg. Do you know if these high salaries are available to Chem E's, or only EE's in places like Silicon Valley?</p>

<p>
[quote]
IMO, it makes no sense financially to get a PhD to work in industry. My friends who started working after getting their MS EE are now making $85k in Silicon Valley, which approaches six figures in total compensation if you include bonuses and stock options. PhDs start out making around $105k, which is probably less that you would be making after 4-5 years of work experience.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I agree with im_blue that it makes little financial sense to get a PhD in engineering if you all you want to do is make money in industry. It may make sense from a personal satisfaction standpoint, because that PhD will qualify you for some high-level research positions that you wouldn't get otherwise. But purely financially, an engineering PhD is probably a losing proposition.</p>

<p>About the only PhD that maybe has a solid financial payback (and I stress the word 'maybe') is getting a PhD in either economics or business administration/management, especially if you specialize in finance. You get a PhD specializing in finance from a strong school like Wharton or Chicago or MIT, and you can get an extremely high paying job on Wall Street. But PhD's in engineering are probably not a good financial payoff. </p>

<p>What I would say is this. I would say that a PhD program is probably a 'brilliant' way to get your master's degree. Few master's degrees students are financially supported by the school, but almost all doctoral students are. So you can enter a doctoral program without any intention of actually finishing the doctorate, but just to use it to get paid to get a master's degree. True, the doctoral stipend isn't much, but hey, it's better than having to pay for the master's degree. Then once you have the master's degree, you can assess where you stand. If you think you can finish the doctorate in a short period of time (i.e. a year or so), then you may want to stick around and complete it. If not, then you just take the master's degree and quit. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I'm thinking about going into Chemical Engg. Do you know if these high salaries are available to Chem E's, or only EE's in places like Silicon Valley?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Here's a point of reference. Take a look at page 14 of this pdf, that shows the salaries earned by engineering master's degree recipients (SM and MEng) from MIT in the years 2004, and 2005. </p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation04.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation04.pdf&lt;/a>
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation05.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation05.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Thanks for the link Sakky. My school isn't even comparable to MIT (Alberta), but those numbers still look good. Looks like an MSc is much more valuable than an MEng. </p>

<p>Health Sciences average 192k with a Master's degree? That doesn't even make sense. What kind of health sciences are we talking about?</p>

<p>Oh, and those are starting salaries right?</p>

<p>Yes, these are starting salaries.</p>

<p>I would some of the really wacky salaries that have few data points with a large grain of salt, because they can represent unsually circumstances. That's why the HST salary is so strange. Keep in mind that that was based off of 2 people. I think I may even know the person who caused that HST salary to be so wacked. You see, the HST program attracts a lot of mid-career health professionals, i.e. practicing medical doctors, executives in pharmaceutical or biotech firms, etc. </p>

<p>So a guy who is already a pharmaceutical executive might take a year off to get his master's degree from HST. Since he's already an executive, he was already making a lot of money beforehand. Then when he graduates, he will make a huge "starting salary". But that's not really a starting salary because he's really just going back to his old high-paying executive job. </p>

<p>So I think I may know the one guy who graduated from HST and then made something like 250-300k to "start". But of course he was already making well over 200k even before he came to HST. </p>

<p>The point is, when you got only a few data points, lots of weird things can happen. You should concentrate on the data for which there are lots of data points.</p>

<p>As another point of reference, here are the Stanford engineering salaries for the last few years.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0405/engineering.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0405/engineering.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0304/engineering.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0304/engineering.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0203/engineering.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0203/engineering.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0102/engineering.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CDC/surveys/0102/engineering.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>