<p>I've heard of students from Cornell that do research all four years while fulfilling their Bachelor's Degree requirements, after which they go for a Ph.D. I was looking through the Cornell website, and I've seen the instances get referenced several times throughout the CC forum, but I don't understand how this is possible. Could anyone explain? Thanks.</p>
<p>well, you can get a PhD after you get a BS. It takes several years to get the PhD, and you have to apply like every other student ... and you have to beat the single digit acceptance rates, but it's possible</p>
<p>Yep. It's pretty straightforward. If you have high GRE scores, a good academic record, and strong letters of recommendation, you might have a good shot of getting into a PhD program.</p>
<p>But even then, less than 50% of students who begin a PhD program finish.</p>
<p>by the time you're even a fraction of the way through a PhD program, half of your friends will be making 6 digits anyways</p>
<p>Especially the ones working at Bear Stearns.</p>
<p>haha i'm going for my phd next year at columbia... i hope i make it through
(PS you don't need really high GRE scores (~70th percentile) and a super high GPA (3.3-3.5 is enough) to get into a good grad school in the sciences)</p>
<p>I bet the Columbia kids on these boards are shuddering over the fact that they might have office hours with a teaching assistant who did undergrad from a 'lesser' Ivy. The horror!</p>
<p>Conrgrats, Cornelli... what are you going to be studying?</p>
<p>haha no, don't worry, I won't have to TA any classes since I'll be at the medical campus. I'm not exactly sure what my PhD is going to be in yet since I haven't picked a lab. Overall, it is in the biomedical sciences, but will most likely be in metabolic biology. Thanks!</p>
<p>What is the primary reason for people dropping out of a phD program? Is it that their research simply isn't going well?</p>
<p>judging by some ILR PhD's I knew, there are some rather lucrative job offers along the way</p>
<p>Plus I knew some who were well into that whole life cycle and it's tough to raise a family on their meager salary</p>
<p>Yea, but we're talking about a bio phD candidate here. "bio" and "lucrative" are rarely found in the same sentence.</p>
<p>That, or burnout.</p>
<p>Something like less than 1 out of every 100 people who start a PhD program become a tenured professor.</p>
<p>Obviously, if you are in a top ten program, you have a much higher chance of graduating and landing a tenure track position. But even then, it may be at Podunk U. I professor of mine who I was friendly with at Cornell did Swarthmore undergrad, Stanford grad, and was a Cornell professor for seven years. Great teacher and brilliant guy. But he got denied tenure and is now going to be teaching at some Cal State school.</p>
<p>yea, becoming a professor is very difficult. I've been seriously considering going into industry after getting my PhD, but I guess I have 5+ years to figure that out. I'd like to get married and have babies by the time I'm ~32, which doesn't seem possible while I'm a post-doc (read, professor's b*tch) for years and years.</p>