<p>Hi,
I'm not really sure if I want to go for a PhD, and I've heard that if you go for it, you should really know that you want to. Does it make sense for me to go for a Masters Degree first, then try to apply to PhD programs? How useful is a Masters Degree in Engineering, specifically Materials?</p>
<p>In general, if you are interested in the PhD, you should go for the PhD - the funding is better and most schools expect (and are okay with) a certain percentage of students to decide to leave the program with only a masters. Conversely, a masters-only route means less or no funding as well as a whole new round of applications down the road. Do NOT apply to a PhD program if you are not interested in the PhD, as it will get out and damage your reputation.</p>
<p>As to the MEng, it depends greatly on the school and the program. Most (not all) MEng programs differ from the MS by lacking a research requirement and by often offering classes in alternative and often inferior format (evenings, internet). This hurts you in PhD admissions because (a) the reputation will be less, (b) your level of knowledge will be less than your MS-holding peers, (c) you will gain no research training, (d) the lack of research will give you little insight into the life of a doctoral student, and (e) you will gain no research-based letters of recommendation. Please note the “most” part above - there is no standardization, and at some schools the types can be reversed or just different.</p>
<p>I speak from experience here - I received a masters degree of the type I described, and it was poor preparation for the doctoral program I entered.</p>
<p>There is nothing “inferior” about courses offered in evening or via internet, as long as the content and exams are identical. </p>
<p>Columbia offers some engineering classes from 4pm to 7pm, also some classes as late as 6:30-9:30pm. And those are legit classes that most grad/undegrad are required to take. And guess what, if you are so concerned about “evening classes”, you don’t really have to mention it as your transcript will not how what time you classes were held. </p>
<p>The only thing that hurts the PhD admission chance is the lack of research, but you can always volunteer to take independent study courses as you wish. In the end, it’s up to how you manage your program of study.</p>
<p>If you’re unsure, do an MS first. All possible scenarios are great.</p>
<p>If you decide you don’t want to continue on for a phd, awesome, you now have an advanced degree in materials engineering, and you are very very hireable.</p>
<p>If you decide you do want to continue on for a phd, awesome, you now have a major leg up on every other applicant due to your research history. Additionally, your time spent doing phd will generally be shortened due to your research and course experience, so you won’t have even lost anything in doing an MS first.</p>
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The problem is that for the vast majority of schools, they aren’t. Evening and internet courses are usually farmed out to adjunct or junior faculty who are less qualified to teach it, and in many cases the materials and labs are different as well. Even the evening formats are rough - if its discussion heavy, it works, but for lecture 3 hours is too long, especially if it follows a 8-10 hour workday. Most people will never know the difference looking at your transcript, but it influences your preparation and knowledge.</p>
<p>That having been said, there are a few programs out there that don’t do this, that make their senior faculty stay late once a week and offer a real class with real texts (not unedited, unproofread course notes) and real labs. But that is the exception, not the rule.</p>
<p>From my personal point of view, I would go for the MS first and then as you’re making your way through the MS you can decide if you want to go on for the Ph.D. As you finish up your MS you can apply to PhD programs and you’ll have the option of either continuing onto the PhD, or you could begin your career and you’ll still end up with an MS. That’s exactly what my plan is, and in my opinion it is a win-win situation.</p>
<p>^it’s win-win because you have too much money to spend on MS</p>
<p>or you can get paid to do the same and master out.</p>
<p>I also have to question your discrimination toward “adjunct” professors. </p>
<p>While “adjunct” professors are generally not as high profile as tenured professors, they are more then likely qualified to teach the courses that they are hired to teach in a well-established university. Based on your logic, any courses taught by adjuncts (in day time or in evening) are not real course. Because, as far as I know, many adjuncts also teach classes during day time.</p>
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I have no problem with adjuncts, just their overuse. In my experience, there are two types of adjuncts:</p>
<p>The first type is “second-tier” junior faculty - not good enough to hire full time but worth a try in the minor-leagues. They are usually bright and eager, recent enough in their own education to remember what courses should look and feel like, strong enough in the fundamentals to teach intro courses and competent enough in their thesis topics to tackle a few areas in depth. I genuinely have little problem with these guys, as long as they are managed well.</p>
<p>The second type is seasoned professionals, teaching a few courses on the side. They are great for “special topics” or dead-end courses meant to take the theory and classwork and put it into a real-world perspective. Many are very accomplished in their fields, but that does not necessarily make them good teachers or course designers. I have to date had 11 courses taught by this type of faculty, and while all of them had something interesting and useful to contribute, the courses themselves were essentially a mess. Example: Only 2/11 used peer reviewed textbooks, the rest using their own error-riddled and occasionally hand-written course notes - please note that I am not talking pre-publication texts here, that would be paradise by comparison.</p>
<p>The big problem I have seen is when a program is put together using primarily that second type - a characteristic of most evening/internet MEng programs. There is little coherence to the programs, and the faculty feel little or no obligation to each other to pass on well-prepared students - some courses are more like informal study groups where you get an “A” for attendence. The low level of theory taught by these real-world-focused adjuncts means that students are underprepared for later courses where the theory has to be ingrained.</p>
<p>Anyway, that has been my experience, and by asking around it has not been uncommon - I work for a large company where literally hundreds have MEng-type degrees, and most consider them acceptable as a terminal degree, but those few of us who have then gone on to doctoral study have found ourselves at a disadvantage. For that matter, I cannot think of any “highly competent” engineers in my old or new departments who ended their studies with such a degree - all the really good ones did it the usual way, with regular faculty and research.</p>
<p>… sounds like you think any course taught by adjunct is useless. The only difference between an adjunct and a tenured professor are: 1. Adjuncts tend to spend less time doing research and more time teaching, 2. Adjuncts are generally younger, and still need to gain more experience to gain promotion to Assistant/tenured professors. </p>
<p>In my experience, adjunct and tenured professors teach exactly the same content, same theory for the same course. They have to follow the course description set by the department and university registrar (or otherwise, you’d think they won’t be hired for long). You learn exactly the same thing. The only matter is the teaching style. Some tenured professors are so focused on their research that they don’t really care how students are doing in class. Adjunct professors generally make more time available to studens in office hours than tenured professors. I went to a Top-3 public schools (you can guess which), and an Ivy League school, and the adjunct they hire are well-qualified PhD, and they wouldn’t get lazy by skipping topic or just teaching low level theory. </p>
<p>If the master degree comes from a school where adjuncts give automatic A, then the degree probably wouldn’t be worth much and the school is probably not a high-ranked prestigious school. </p>
<p>Just to let you know, Cornell’s engineering school only grants “MEng-type degrees” as terminal degree. I don’t know if you can discount Cornell’s “MEng-type degrees”.</p>
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This is not anywhere close to anything I said.</p>
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In my experience, most universities use “adjunct” to refer to faculty who are not full-time employees of the university - in some cases, they are part-timers hoping for a promotion into full-time, in other cases they have other employment in or outside their field. Adjunct does not merely imply non-tenured or non-tenure track - that is a different issue.</p>
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I just took a look at the program, and I would hold it in a middle ground - they appear to use regular faculty, but have a minimal research component that can be completed in a semester or two and does not have to be particularly original. That would (to me) put it above evening part-time programs, but below 2-yr research based programs.</p>
<p>Do you distinguish between a professionally oriented master programs and research oriented programs? Cornell’s terminal master programs are clearly geared for those who wish to go into industry after graduation rather than continuing for PhD. Of course, if you want to go or PhD, you can not do professionally oriented masters. </p>
<p>Also, there are many other Master of Science programs in top engineering schools that are “course-work” only (i.e. not much research involved). Columbia’s M.S. programs are course work only and do not require thesis (you can do thesis if you want). UC-Berkeley, UCLA’s master of science programs also only require a project (geared for professionals, and thesis is again optional). </p>
<p>I personally don’t hold against any of the programs above (MEng or MS). It all depends on what the ultimate goal is. And the transcript is not going to show if you did a thesis or not. </p>
<p>In my schools, we don’t use “adjunct” as a part-time employees. The only part time instructors are what we called “Lecturers”, and we also have some full-time lecturers, whose only responsbility is teaching.</p>
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Absolutely, especially since the OP was specifically asking about using the MEng as a possible stepping stone into a PhD program. Even without that specific distinction, in industry I have seen a correlation between the success of individual engineers and the nature of their degrees - most of the top engineers at any point in their careers have research degrees, not coursework only. There are exceptions, but its pretty consistent.</p>
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Of course it does, but I would still maintain that the research degrees are more valuable. And while the type does not appear on the transcript, every company or school I have interviewed with has asked me about whether or not my masters included a research-based thesis.</p>
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Then this is a terminology issue - most schools reserve “adjunct” for part-timers or for personnel with full-time appointments in one department who also have some privileges in another, but there are no rules mandating this and your school might do it differently.</p>