I am currently a second year Ph.D student at UMich. I have been considering leaving with the M.S. for multiple reasons:
I am not particularly interested in the research area of my research group. I am in the process of switching out, and I originally chose this group because the topic of the project interested me.
I will need to be away from my girlfriend for the next 4 years. This is actually a very big deal for me.
I am not sure if I want to do research, as I do not have any serious field experience to compare with.
I would personally like to leave in one semester with the M.S. and then come back in a few years if I realize the Ph.D is something I really want to do. The problem, is that I am not guaranteed to be reaccepted. So, my question is this:
What are my chances of being accepted into a Ph.D program at UMich / a different university after I have an M.S. from UMich. My undergraduate GPA is 3.84 and my grad GPA will be about 3.7. I will have at least one small publication upon leaving with the M.S. as well as three nice (likely unpublished) projects.
Also, do you have any advice in general concerning these things?
Well, it depends. It’s a conundrum: if you do really want to leave, it’s better to leave earlier, when you have invested less time into the program. However, it sounds like you’re unsure about whether you really like research and want a career in it, and the best way to figure out whether you like that is to do it for a while and see if you like it.
Do you have a sense if whether your uncertainty about research is the fact that you don’t like the area you are currently in, or whether you don’t like research in general? When you think about trying to do research in an area in which you are really interested, does that make you excited or “meh”? Did you like writing the publication that you wrote? Did you enjoy the process of doing the research even if you weren’t interested in the subject matter?
Do you know if you want a research career or not? Do you see yourself as a university professor or non-academic researcher, or are you just unsure?
There’s really no way to predict your chances in a few years, because it depends on so much: how long you spend away, the impact of the publication(s) you are about to put out, your field, etc. You could take a one-year leave of absence, miss it terribly and return very smoothly. Or you could take 5 years off to do something unrelated and then have a hard time getting readmitted anywhere. Hesitantly, I say that if you could get into a top program the first time, you can probably get into another top program later as long as you don’t wait too long or stray too far. (You may have to retake the GRE if you stay out for longer than 2 years - the scores expire after 5 years.)
It very much depends on the field. For example, in organismal biology, it is quite often the case that students take a year between the B.S. and M.S. and then take some more time off before starting the Ph.D. This does not affect their admissibility that much. If you are really not sure now, take the M.S. and work for a while. If you decide that a Ph.D. is really what you want then you will likely not be back at UMich (after all you aren’t too enthusiastic about your research possibilities there).
As an alternative, you can explore if it is possible to take a leave of absence for a specific amount of time and then return with no adverse consequences.