<p>Would a doctorate in mechanical engineering help at all? Would one be able to easily find a job as opposed to a doctorate in physics? In addition, which one would generally have the more favorable salary?</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>If you are thinking PhD you need to throw salary concerns out the window. If you do a PhD for money you are in for a rude awakening. All you really need to ask yourself is which you are more passionate about. In the end, if you aren’t passionate about a given field then you probably stand no chance of getting a PhD. It’s a huge commitment.</p>
<p>PhDs are not worth it for the salary boost?</p>
<p>If you want money, get an MS and an MBA.</p>
<p>Oh. Has this been accepted for a while (PhD is not worth it for the money) or only in recent years? I used to hear a lot of people telling me I should get a PhD quite awhile ago, but now those same people are telling me otherwise as the money is not worth it.</p>
<p>What is the motivation for people to get a PhD nowadays? Passion in their field? Love for research? Want to become a professor?</p>
<p>A PhD has never been about money. It’s simply too much work and way too involved for people who aren’t passionate about it to make it through often. On top of that, they don’t make substantially more than someone with a MS given all the extra work that goes into it.</p>
<p>You get a PhD because you have a passion for the field and are interested in contributing to it through research.</p>
<p>I concur, the biggest salary boost is with a Masters degree. Not only that bout it only takes a year or two of lost earnings. With a Ph.D. it will be an average of 5-6 years and the end salary is not significantly higher than with a Masters.</p>
<p>Do the Ph.D. because you are passionate about research and choose the field that you are most excited about. That being said, when you are doing research, there are many areas where you work in the overlap between different disciplines so the specific department is less important. i know Physics faculty who have Ph.D.s in Chemistry and Materials Engineering with Physics Ph.D.s</p>
<p>What if you go for a PhD and realize half way through it that you’re not as passionate about the field as you once thought? Can you drop out and automatically get a master’s? </p>
<p>I guess you can start out getting a master’s then a PhD, but if your ultimate goal is a PhD, then it’s faster to do it directly rather than getting a master’s first, but it’s hard to see just how passionate you are until you’re actually in the program.</p>
<p>There is usually a way to do this. i would not recommend doing a Masters with thesis first and then starting on another thesis for a Ph.D. That being said certain disciplines and departments do require a Masters to be completed first (usually not in physics though).</p>
<p>xraymancs, why do you recommend not doing a Masters with thesis first and then doing a PhD?</p>
<p>Just count the years, a Masters with thesis is at least 2 years but could be more. Add to that the additional courses and new project for the Ph.D. that takes another 4-5 years and you are now in 7-8 year territory. If you go straight for the Ph.D. you can expect 5-6 years total after the B.S. (your mileage may vary). But more to the point, why start a research project that you take to a Masters level and then start over with another one. You will not gain any more valuable insight by doing this rather than just doing a thorough job on a single project.</p>
<p>However, if you can pick up a coursework masters on the way to a Ph.D. (often done in physics), do so, it costs you nothing more than a filing fee.</p>
<p>If you decide to do a Master’s first, I would suggest doing a thesis-based Masters first. First, you will have experience writing a thesis already. Second, that MS thesis often leads to a publication in a journal, which is highly beneficial for those ultimately shooting for a PhD. Third, there are many PhD programs that just don’t give non-thesis degrees the same weight.</p>
<p>The most important one is number 2, however. Why waste a year or two in a non-thesis MS program which will contribute very little toward your PhD when you could do a thesis-based MS instead that will often give you a bit of a jump start on your PhD research and will always help hone your research skills prior to hitting the meat of your PhD. Yes a thesis-based degree will sometimes take longer, but this is offset by the fact that they cut down on the learning curve involved in learning to be a researcher. A person who holds a thesis-based MS can usually start a PhD and hit the ground running; a non-thesis student usually cannot. On other words, yes the thesis-based MS may take a but longer sometimes, but it usually shortens the length of the PhD so there’s not really much difference time-wise. The other benefits of a thesis-based MS therefore make it more advantageous for those looking to pursue a PhD.</p>
<p>I read that some national labs only hire PhDs, is there any truth to that? </p>
<p>I’m trying to decide whether to pursue a Master’s or PhD, but I don’t really know what I want.</p>
<p>As far as I know all the national labs hire BS and MS engineers as well, but you aren’t going to be running the show with those degrees.</p>
<p>Ahhh. Man, I don’t know how I’m gonna decide. My school doesn’t have any available research opportunities in the area I want to do, so I will not be able to find out just how much I like it until I’m actually in graduate school, but to do that I need to decide whether I want a master’s or PhD.</p>
<p>Here are some things I want (maybe you guys can give me some suggestions on which degree seems more appropriate):
- I like research.
- I’m more interested in making money.
- If I get a PhD, I plan on going into industry. I don’t think I will stay in academia.
- I do like having the title of a PhD though.
- I like school and taking courses that I enjoy. But I feel like I’ve been so focused on school during my undergrad that I haven’t been able to enjoy life. I’m scared that’ll happen during grad school as well. Do people generally spend more time during grad school or undergrad?
- I heard engineering master’s students are usually not funded. If I do decide to apply for my master’s, I will NOT go if I do not receive funding.
- I also don’t want to work and do a master’s at the same time either (only included because I know companies you work for can fund your master’s). I like being a full time student if I’m going to go to grad school. </p>
<p>Also, sorry for stealing the thread!</p>
<p>Take a look into REU programs. They’re sponsored by the NSF for students at schools with fewer research opportunities to go to larger research-based schools for the summer to see how they like working in a lab.</p>
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<p>Well that’s a good start for a PhD or for a thesis-based MS.</p>
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<p>You can make good money either way but there is essentially no monetary advantage of doing a PhD as opposed to just a MS for the majority of people.</p>
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<p>That is fine. Industry has use for both MS and PhD engineers. They often have far fewer positions for PhD engineers though. It helps that there are far fewer PhD engineers to go around, so as long as you play your cards right, you generally won’t have too hard a job finding work, especially if you have a good advisor with good connections.</p>
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<p>This is not a good reason to get a PhD.</p>
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<p>I have worked quite a bit harder in graduate school than I ever had to during my undergraduate studies. Most people I know are the same. I have still had time to have a life though.</p>
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<p>That depends a lot on the school and specific advisor. For example, here nearly all MS students are funded assuming they are doing a thesis-based degree. Many other places this is no the case.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions.</p>
<p>RacinReaver, I have applied to several programs. I consider my school to be a research-based school, but it does not have the research areas of my interest. I know some REU programs encourage applicants from schools where research is not common; I’m not sure if that includes universities that are research-based, but do not have the area of interest for the applicant. </p>
<p>boneh3ad, from what I’ve experienced, I think my current institution is a bit more rigorous, not necessarily harder, but seemingly more time consuming than some other universities. I know engineering courses are extremely time consuming, but every semester I always have 1-2 classes out of 4-5 that are very time consuming (probably average 20-30 hours a week just on that one class for the homework, labs, projects, etc…). Maybe it’s just because I try to get an A in every class though or maybe I have to work harder than others to get the same grade. Last semester, I’d say I had about 20-25 hours of free time/week, which was about the same as my 2 semesters during my sophomore year. I have a feeling this semester will be brutal. I also have a very bad habit of wasting time and getting distracted, so that wastes a lot of my time. </p>
<p>How much free time would you say you have per week at the moment?
What schools did you have in mind that don’t fund their master’s students?
I know Stanford is known for that, but I haven’t looked much into it.</p>
<p>I did my undergrad at a school ranked top 5 and know for being rigorous and I still worked harder in graduate school. I am finished with classes so my actual work time when not at the lab varies pretty wildly. Some weeks I’ll spend basically the whole week working with almost no free time. Others I’ll work my ~40 standard hours at the lab and basically no more. On average it’s probably a 60 hour work week though. Ish.</p>
<p>I know Michigan is kind of iffy on funding MS student, at least when I was applying during an admittedly terrible economy. Cornell is entirely unfunded I believe. It just varies. Do your research into differen schools and you’ll figure it out.</p>
<p>My suggestion was not to take extra time doing the non-thesis Masters, just to take it “on the way” so to speak at the same university. Usually in physics, the coursework for the Masters is a subset of that for a Ph.D. so there is no overhead. By doing a Masters thesis, you DO add time to the eventual Ph.D. endpoint.</p>
<p>If you really want a Ph.D. eventually, do it right away though since most physics programs won’t offer a lot of financial aid to Masters students.</p>