<p>I haven't posted here in 6 years, but I am back to a website that was immensely helpful in high school.</p>
<p>I majored in finance (parents) and psychology (what I was really interested in) in college. I did research / an honors thesis in psychology, with the thought of always doign a PhD in psychology. I have been working in invesment banking for a year. Although I find finance interesting, I have always had going back to grad school for psychology in the back of my mind. Would it be crazy to give up a six-figure salary and potential for much more to pursue doing what I love? </p>
<p>Thoughts from anyone who left a good paying job in industry to go into grad school?</p>
<p>One of the guys I knew in grad school went from consulting to do a PhD in engineering since he felt the work he was don’t wasn’t very fulfilling. He left after his first year for another consulting job.</p>
<p>My father left a lucrative profession to become a professor at half the salary, which left a big impression on me. He loved teaching, loved to go to work every day, was always very happy with that decision.</p>
<p>I came across something in Philip Delved Broughton’s “Ahead of the Curve,” about Harvard Business School, that stood out to me:</p>
<p>“Who… you wonder, grew up longing to be in product management or marketing research? Who lay in the summer grass aged ten staring up at the sky thinking how magical it would be one day to sit in a glass box beside a freeway running pivot tables? Or revising contracts? No One.”</p>
<p>I think you have to think about the reasons you want to do a PhD. Are you idealizing the field, or do you really know what you are getting yourself into and are confident in your decision? My recommendation is to work for more than one year, unless you hate it, to make sure that it’s something you really want to leave. You say that you have always had going to grad school in the back of your mind. Really what you should have in the back of your mind is a <em>goal</em> that graduate school will help you reach. Do you want to be a clinical/counseling/school psychologist which requires a PhD and a license? Do you want to teach psychology as a professor? Do you want to do psychological research at government labs and/or think tanks? Those are generally the three things that require a PhD in psychology. Don’t go just to go; go because there’s a career you want that requires the PhD.</p>
<p>I don’t think that no one having dreams of being a product manager or marketing researcher, however, is a good measure of whether it’s a desirable career. You can’t dream about things you have no idea exist, and most children and adolescents don’t know about the wide variety of careers that are available. There are some people who love and are really passionate about those things. I never grew up, for example, dreaming about crunching numbers but I really love statistics and am passionate about it. I also never dreamed about being a professor, but I like advising students and teaching classes. There are many ways to be “true to yourself,” and most people probably have a variety of fields they’d be happy in.</p>
<p>Another alternative is to get a PhD in management, marketing, or industrial/organizational psychology. Many psychologists go on to teach business, and unlike psychology, business is experiencing a shortage of professors. In fact, four universities have created postdoctoral programs to prepare social science and mathematics professors to teach business on the college level. Business professors can start off making six figures as well - or close - and they do research and teach just like psych professors do.</p>
<p>This is definitely true. Professors of business have starting salaries 50-100% higher than those in engineering or the sciences even at GT, which does not have a well-known business school and already pays its STEM professors well (around $90-100k).</p>
<p>Thank you for the advice. Although intially I wanted to go to graduate school because I wanted to become a psychologist, I did resarch in college in a specific area of clinical psychology that I became really interested in, so I wouldn’t rule out research or practice at this point. </p>
<p>I have considered doing a PhD in the business school and although I think it would be a lot more interesting than working in the corporate world, it is not really what I want to do.</p>
<p>What really scares me about graduate school is that it seems that every time I hear or read about someone in graduate school, they are very unhappy (with the amount of work, the lack of $, not liking the research they do, terrible future job prospects) . My biggest fear is that I will take a huge paycut /potential for future pay, and end up hating graduate school. It seems to be a really risky move, but I cannot think of anything more that I want to do. The goal is definetly not graduate school, but what comes after - whether it ends up me becoming a psychologist or staying in research.</p>
<p>For a somewhat more realistic perspective than you usually get of grad students, watching the PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) movie is actually worth a watch. Many of the problems most grad students deal with are addressed in the movie, from TAing classes, to dealing with all sorts of professors, to, the most brutal, meeting up with a friend from high school that didn’t go to grad school and instead went straight into the corporate world successfully.</p>
I am a happy PhD student. As are most of my classmates. I actually chose my particular PhD program specifically because the students seemed happier than at most other places. The weather is nice, pay is good, campus is pretty, professors are encouraging but not pushy, the teaching load is very reasonable… Aside from occasional identity crises (“what do i really care about and is academia the best place to accomplish that?”), most of us seem quite content. </p>
<p>Not all graduate students are unhappy. In fact, when I was visiting graduate programs, I was quite surprised how different the work-life balances were in different programs. You should be able to find decent programs where the students don’t feel overworked if that’s your main priority. If they exists in math, it stands to reason that they exist in psychology too.</p>
<p>My daughter is in a Phd track program, entering 4th year, she has rec’d her Master’s through it already. She interned the last 2 years at a hot company that paid a 6 figure+ equivalent salary, but is still returning to accomplish the degree. I think she feels comfortable that she can command the salary if the next 2 to 3 years don’t work out, and that this is the time to continue (as opposed to ‘going back’.) </p>
<p>However, in your position you might want to give it more than a year and bank some funds. A year is nothing in the scope of things. Also that is not an significant amount of time should you like to return to the field later.</p>
<p>She isn’t miserable but loves school and her college town. She is always very busy and scheduled, but does have time for a social life, a boyfriend and is in a music group as well. But she is not yet in the Thesis phase of her program.</p>
<p>Thank you for everyone’s reply! I decided to proceed with the application and I am taking the GREs in October and November.</p>
<p>One final question - how will clinical PhD programs view my work experience, especially since it is not relevant? I was very engaged in research before I started working, but because of demanding hours have not been able to do anything outside of work.</p>