<p>I want to be a software engineer, and I want to study computer science. Yet I cannot get over these degrees.</p>
<p>Its like attaining only a bachelor in EECS doesn't seem enough for me, yet attaining a masters but not attaining a phd degree feels incomplete.</p>
<p>Does anyone have these type of thoughts or is it just me?</p>
<p>I felt similarly; I wanted to program but I still wanted to do research. Luckily, almost every field needs programmers. I picked biology, and now I’m hopefully going into genomics, hopefully going to grad school after undergrad, and hopefully staying in academia.</p>
<p>This guy is a high school student. My advice is to not think so far ahead. It might make sense to spend a few years in industry between MS and PhD anyway, especially for computer science. At that point, you can decide whether it serves your interests. You don’t have to be in grad school to do cutting-edge stuff in computer science.</p>
<p>Oh. You’re a high school student. What collegealum314 said. Do what you enjoy. You’ll have plenty of time to work out the specifics later; anything you decide now will probably end up changing anyway.</p>
<p>Yes, I admit I’m only a high school student and I cannot guarantee I will change my mind after all these years.</p>
<p>But I’m just asking for your thoughts on this “incompleteness” for doing a Masters on any subject, it’s like:</p>
<p>Resume:</p>
<p>BS, Subject
MS, EECS</p>
<p>Won’t this feel incomplete for you?
Thank you and have a nice day!</p>
<p>No, it doesn’t. If you’re going into industry that’s actually exactly what you want. If you get a PhD people will be less likely to hire you because you’re overqualified and might ask for too much money. If you go into academia then yes, you’d need a PhD.</p>
<p>I went through a round of full-time recruiting this year and ultimately decided to get my master’s degree. This is why.</p>
<p>With a bachelor’s degree in computer science, you are expected to be a generalist - it’s assumed that you’ve learned some computer science but not much in any one particular area, and so the jobs that you’re offered play to that. I was offered a lot of entry-level software engineering positions, but none that I found particularly compelling.</p>
<p>I am interested in machine learning / algorithms, and I decided to get my master’s degree to prove that I have mastery in this field. Once I’ve achieved this degree, I expect to be able to get more interesting entry-level jobs because I’ve shown that I have the technical chops to handle it. In addition, doing a year of research and writing a master’s thesis will give me some solid experience that I can talk about in job interviews.</p>
<p>So, that is why people who want to go into industry may find a master’s degree a valuable thing to earn.</p>
<p>There can be these insane cravings that you must get a PhD. What you should do is try to educate yourself as much as possible about what those paths actually are, and what it would actually buy you. The best feeling would possibly be to go into the PhD knowing what you want out of it and get exactly that. What path leads you to such a path depends on you and a lot of other things.</p>
<p>My strong advice is to try to get involved in interesting things as soon as you can, to the point where you forget degrees and things like that. It’s a nice feeling. Of course, in the back of your mind, do what you need to do to sustain your future of choice.</p>