Grad School Thread - Page 4

A few years ago, I'd be all about following your dreams and doing what you love, or where your heart takes you, yadda yadda yadda... If you stand a better chance of landing a job with a History degree, do that. Seriously.


Truth. This is coming from someone who had to find my own funding because the dept. wouldn't provide it. My colleagues were more than helpful, but the faculty superstars wanted nothing to do with me.

In the sciences, and especially in engineering, I would say this claim is laughable.

I think that those of us with some experience or knowledge in this domain are simply horrified at the thought of going into debt to go down this path. It's bad enough to give up solid income for XX years in industry. Also, anybody who thinks that they can "play the game" for academic jobs really doesn't understand how arbitrary and unpredictable it is.

Kudos for your determination, and I hope that things fall into place for you.

Do explain, and in what context?

Teger, you're not being introspective. 1) What do you see as your contribution to society? What skills do you have or hope to have that society demands? 2) How are those skills enhanced by option A vs. B. (This has nothing to do with job placement potential.) It's strictly educational. 3) If your noted potential contributions to society are arbitrarily valued with a selectivity bias, are they valued at all? (as both a student and educator) 4) If your contribution to society in the form of a future teaching position is dependent on a similar degree of luck needed to win a scratchers ticket, how does society as a whole benefit by the prevalence of its members using this thought process to determine how to best spend their lives? Does society win when people chase non-existent opportunities at the expense of supplying other demands?

There are people at top institutions (Harvard, Stanford, CMU, etc. etc.) that got an MS/ME from an institution different than their PhD/SciD institution. That is, they got their MS and then were accepted into PhD/SciD programs. If you're a qualified applicant, programs won't necessarily disqualify you for having been in a masters program first. This is purely skeptical, but I would guess that a large number of colleges realize that people often go back for their MS / PhD while working, so they may not do it all at once. I do know for a fact that engineering firms will pay for their top employees to go back and get Master's degrees, apply that knowledge at work for a while, and then will often pay for a 3-5 year hiatus for PhD work. Those programs offer lots of real-world knowledge or utility, much of which can aid in the research these firms do.

Go with the 2nd school that funds you without a doubt. Get your masters, do really well at it, and then apply back to school A for the PhD program.

That said, have you called the first school explaining that you got into school B as well, would prefer to go to their school and see what funding packages they might be able to pull together?

He can try, but I doubt that they'll do anything. Unless he was their top applicant, they'll just go "whatever, get one of the waitlist kids that would DIE to get into here on the phone."

Yeah. Call them up and tell them Harvard offered you full tuition and tell them you're still considering Virginia Tech as long as they offer 75%. You'll show them.