<p>Son is having a difficult time choosing.</p>
<p>Stony Brook-27K stipend plus tuition waiver. We live 10 miles from the university.</p>
<p>UPenn- Highly ranked program, chance for partial stipend.</p>
<p>Which is better, getting a free PHD from a public university or partially paying for a Masters from a highly ranked program?</p>
<p>Any advice appreciated.</p>
<p>What’s your son’s ultimate goal. Does he realize that is usually takes 5-6 years to obtain a Ph.D. vs 2-years for a Master’s degree?</p>
<p>Probably an MS degree, but would like the option to go for his PHD. </p>
<p>I would pick the PhD program, given that I hate having to apply to schools. I would prefer to apply once, rather than apply to MS program and then again to PhD program.</p>
<p>My “tiger mom” would probably say UPenn, to add an Ivy League to my resume. (and then do a PhD afterwards).</p>
<p>What is your son’s career goal? </p>
<p>His linkedin profile says “aspiring medical physicist”</p>
<p>Which is better, getting a free PHD from a public university or partially paying for a Masters from a highly ranked program?</p>
<p>I think this is a false equivalence, with the implication that ‘public university’ is not as good as a ‘highly-ranked’ university. There are many public universities that ARE highly-ranked, some more highly ranked than Ivy schools in many many fields. Stony Brook is a top 15 program in biomedical engineering; it’s a very, very good PhD program in that field. (Source: <a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124710/</a>). And apparently, MRI was invented at Stony Brook, as well as a few other important medical physics-related breakthroughs. It’s no slouch in the field.</p>
<p>Also, you don’t yet know if you are only partially paying for the master’s from Penn. You have a chance at a partial stipend.</p>
<p>So the question is really - free-to-him PhD from a top 15 school in that field, or an expensive master’s degree from an also presumably top program in the field? (I’m not sure if there are rankings for medical physics, but Penn is top 5 for physics and is also a top med school). </p>
<p>Which brings us to the question: What does he really want? Does he want a master’s in the field and to go work as a medical physicist with a master’s? Or does he eventually want to get a PhD?</p>
<p>If he wants the PhD, or he thinks he wants the PhD, then he should go to the PhD program. Generally speaking, PhD students can get an MS along the way. If he decides after 2-3 years in the PhD program that he no longer wants to be there and wants to leave, he can always do that and leave with an MS in medical physics with little debt. I don’t recommend this route if he KNOWS he doesn’t want a PhD, but I’m assuming that if he applied to some PhD programs he has at least thought about it positively.</p>
<p>The only reason I’d choose Penn’s MS program is if he knows, or is pretty sure, that he doesn’t want a PhD - or if he knows that he wants to work for a few years (at least 3) before getting the PhD. And even then, weigh those costs. Are you going to help him pay? Penn’s two-year MS, including living expenses, probably costs close to if not more than $120,000. If he has to borrow all of that, that’s untenable debt. SO it also depends on how “partial” this partial funding is, whether it actually comes through or not, and whether or not you’re going to help him pay for the degree. I wouldn’t borrow $120,000 for a master’s (even though medical physicists seem to be well-compensated…not THAT well). I might borrow ~<=$75,000, though, assuming I had little to no undergrad debt, because medical physicists seem to make enough money to pay that back. So basically I’d be looking for funding that was at least going to cover 50% of the costs for me to attend the program.</p>
<p>Thank you</p>