Hello everyone! My name is future PhD Dr. E, and you're watching "Putting the U back
in Graduate School."
And this series is for you if, one, you want to be a grad student
and you don't know where to start, or two, you're interested about becoming a grad student
and you want to know more. So for this week's topic what we're going to talk
about is grad school for me? And if it is, what things should you be looking for for
grad school. So what is grad school? Grad school is short for graduate school and
programs are generally between one and three years.
What grad school does is change a specialty into an expertise.
You might be
wondering what the difference between grad school is from you typical four year
Bachelor's degree and I want to show you.
I call this the circle of knowledge and the circle of knowledge was adapted by
Matt Might's Illustrated Guide to a PHD. This best box you see here is all the
knowledge of the entire universe, things we have yet to learn and in this smaller
circle here is the total knowledge of all humans. This can mean anything such
as languages, this can mean music, this can mean sports,
this can mean anything you can think of that all humans have learned at this
point is within this circle. And if you look at this blue circle this is a
knowledge that you learned from pre-k to pre-high school. As you can see it's a
circle and this is just because you have very generalizable information about the
world. You've learned your first language here, you learn how to do basic math and
writing here, and if you go on into high school you see this green circle.
And this green circle is getting more advanced topics of these general ideas.
In high school you may have learned a second language, that's in here, you may
have learned more advanced mathematics, you may have learned how to play an
instrument here. And then you'll get to undergrad you get to college and you
still continue to develop more information. The difference between
college and high school is you can see this bump. This bump represents your
major and this becomes your specialty. For example my-I got my undergrad in
chemical engineering and my bump right here
becomes things about engineering, such as chemistry, physics, advanced math and then
then when you go to grad school, more specifically your Master's, you don't have
a round circle anymore. It becomes more of an oval shape and this is the
transition between your specialty and your expertise. During your Master's you'll
start to get more advanced knowledge in specific fields but the key difference
is your knowledge isn't as broad but your knowledge is much deeper.
So with all this in mind you might be wondering "Why should I go to grad school?"
and well, I have three reasons why you should go to grad school. One, a job you wanted to do requires it.
Some jobs require an advanced degree and the only way to get an advanced degree is to go to grad school.
Two, it might give you an extra credential to separate yourself
from other colleagues. Some companies respect an advanced degree and
they might be able to get a promotion or you might be able to get a raise for
your degree. And three, it allows you to go into a different field. For example I
had a buddy of mine who was in psychology and he really wanted to do
computer science and by going to grad school to get his Master's degree in computer science he
was now eligible for the jobs in the computer science field.
So even though grad school offers a lot of value, it doesn't offer a lot of
value for everyone. There's many reasons why you shouldn't go to grad school. The first
reason why you shouldn't go to grad school is first it's cost. Graduate school can be
very expensive and doesn't necessarily increase your growing potential, so you
should only go to grad school if that's something you know you want to do for your career, or something you know you want to do.
The second thing that I don't
like about grad school is it's very difficult, it's very time consuming and
for those in your 20s you may have other dreams and aspirations you want to
pursue. You really don't have that flexibility,
freedom of time to pursue that in graduate student. So if there's something you want to do
that you're passionate about you should pursue that before graduate school.
The third thing is over qualification. Over qualification is
where normally you're qualified for positions, and grad school
will over qualify you for a lot of positions right now, but it does qualify you for other other positions so
if you like what you're doing I don't think you should go to grad school. You
only go to grad school if there's something that you need grad school for to
do a job that you might do.
So now that we know you've personally thought about graduate
school I'm gonna talk to you about the difference between a Master's and a PhD. The biggest
difference between a Master's and a PhD is a Master's is if you wanna learn a lot about the
field, and a PhD is if you want to contribute to the field.
So in addition to classes a PhD will also take
a research component in order to change the field in a different direction.
So what does that mean? Well we will take another look at the circle of knowledge. Last time we
saw the circle of knowledge we learned the difference between getting an
expertise from a Master's degree versus gaining a specialty from an
undergraduate degree. And now we're going to look into how a PhD differs from a
Master's degree. As you get your PhD your knowledge base becomes even more
specialized than it was from a Master's and you get closer and closer to the limit
of human knowledge. As the years go by you start pushing towards that boundary
of human knowledge and you keep pushing and pushing and then eventually you'll
break past what is currently known into unknown territory, and then that's when
you're ready to get your PhD. Even though it's very minor you have to keep in mind
that a lot of other students are getting their PhD so that's collectively pushing
the boundary of human knowledge even further, and I think that's pretty cool.
So now that we know the differences between a PhD and a Master's, you might be
wondering if you should get a PhD or a Master's. And I'm going to talk about
the advantages of getting a Master's. A Master's, one, is faster than a PhD. A Master's can take
between 1 and 3 years full-time, while a PhD is typically four to seven years. So if you
want to go back into the workforce getting a Master's is definitely for you.
Secondly is a Master's is more flexible in terms of opportunities and in choice.
In terms of opportunities getting a Master's unlike a PhD you don't have a true
expertise yet, so you can definitely go around and get different jobs. And for
a PhD, even though you know much more your knowledge base is so specialized
companies wouldn't necessarily trust you in areas outside your expertise, unlike
a Master's. And the third reason that follows flexibility, if you want to go in
and get a Master's and then leave to work then go for Ph, you can do that. But if
you get a PhD and you find out that you don't like your area of expertise you
typically don't go back to get a second PhD. A second and third PhD are
buried underground. Even though getting a Master's offers a lot of advantages that
doesn't mean that having a PhD has no value. In my opinion getting a PhD
has a lot more value than getting a Master's and I'm about to tell you why. The first
reason is a PhD forces you to do things other people don't so you're able to
do things other people can't. And this allows you to think at a much higher
level than a lot of Master's or Bachelor's degree holders and this can be very lucrative. A
lot of PhDs become consultants and consultants can bring in a lot of money
if that's what you like making. The second reason is most PhD programs are fully
funded so you're essentially getting paid to think, and there's not a lot of
opportunities that provide you that are paid at least. And the third reason is
getting a PhD, since you're contributing to the field, you get to work with a lot of
interesting and complex problems and not many jobs give you the opportunity to do that. So
once you reach this point if you're not sure between if you want to PhD or a
Master's I definitely recommend getting a Master's degree because then you can
always have the option to get a PhD later. Or if you're really curious about
research I suggest a Master's degree with a research component or getting
a Master's degree and doing volunteer research. So that way you can get the feel of the PhD
lifestyle without actually committing to it.
Hopefully by this point you definitely want to go to grad school, which leaves the big
question, "How do I choose a grad school?" And that's a great question to have. But
before I start talking about the things you should be looking for in grad schools
I want you to consider this: you should choose the grad school that fits best for you
and only you. Not your parents, not your mentors, not your community, just you.
Because when you're going through the day-to-day and you choose a grad school
that wasn't best for you but for someone else grad school can be more difficult
than it actually has to be. And with that in mind we're going to talk about the
first thing you need to consider about going to grad school that's the program.
One of the top things you should consider when choosing a grad school is the program.
You should definitely choose a graduate school which interests you. On top of
that you want to consider the funding sources for each program. For Master's
students you're generally unfunded. However some schools have more money and
they're able to support you and give you fellowships and scholarships which is
able to reduce tuition significantly. For PhD students you also want
to look at the funding sources because some programs only have two years of
secured funding while other schools have five or six years of funding. The next
thing you want to consider for grad school is environment. Now when I say environment
I mean what kind of things do you like to do? Do you like fishing? Do you
like hunting? Do you like horseback riding? If so going to graduate school and city
probably isn't best for you. On the other hand if you like driving, if you like the
energy of the city, if you like walking down some streets you probably don't
want to go to graduate school in a rural area. Although there's no perfect choice
you definitely want to choose the choice that's best for you. Cost of living is another big
factor. A lot of people want to live in big cities because big cities are very
fun and have a lot of things to do, but because of that it means things are also
typically more expensive. PhD students usually make $2,500 to $3,000 a month and in
cities like LA, San Francisco, or New York, rent can be anywhere between
$3,000 and $6,000 a month. So if you become a grad student in one of these cities you're
probably going to need a lot of roommates. This may be a problem or this may not be big on your list of goals.
But this is definitely something you should keep in mind. For PhD students one thing you should consider is the
advisor matching process. And as far as I know there are two advisor matching
processes: one is rotation. The rotation style allows students to rotate between
different lab groups and they're able to make connections with different lab
members and find out what project they really want to take on. The disadvantage
of this style is there may not be space for this research group that you really want to work in.
Alternatively there is the direct match system in which you are
able to be directly matched into a research group. The advantage of this style is
you're able to be directly matched so there is space for you in the lab.
Unfortunately it's much more difficult to switch out of the lab if it's not a lab you want to
work with.
And with that, that's the end of this week's episode. Next week we're
going to go into how to get into grad school,
where I step-by-step show you how to get into a grad school that you want to get
into. So tune in next time!
Bye bye now!