aoxomoxoa wrote:
5) You'll never get hired at an academic institution.
If you're LGBTQ+ and a PoC, you've got a career and will be fast tracked, research be damned.
aoxomoxoa wrote:
5) You'll never get hired at an academic institution.
If you're LGBTQ+ and a PoC, you've got a career and will be fast tracked, research be damned.
I am neither of those Prof.
So, hard time to think about my choices.
If you are not able to go full time into school then i would advise against it. The course work is not the problem but the dissertation process is miserable if you don't have a committee who has your best interest in mind.
I worked through mine and my biggest mistake was not spending time on campus and connecting with professors to find ones who really cared about my success. The reality is that facetime should not matter but there are so many egos involved and they have various incentives for wanting you not to finish.
If it’s what you really want to do, I’d say go for it. I started med school when I was 33. It’s been a lot of work, and I still have a long road ahead of me, but I have never regretted the decision for a second.
Thanks, I’ve been thinking about Full time.
Thanks, you are an inspiration to people like me.
Not to mention that becoming an assistant professor of whatever at a university is its own special level of hell. Less than 20% of your time will be actual research. You'll get to learn how to manage people (sucks), budgets, committees (universities have more BS committees than anywhere else), classes, having to crank out papers with good journal impact factors, deal with horrible undergrads (maybe), horrible graduate students (probably), post-docs (they're ok), And every year you have to live or die and justify to your chair why they should keep you around another year. Meanwhile you have to bite your tongue and tiptoe around university bureaucracy who won't hesitate to throw you under a bus. And provided you're not suicidal or an alcoholic, you apply for tenure which is its own level of stupid BS.
Thanks Prof, that’s sad. I never thought academics will also have so many games. My primary motivation is to move out from an industry and so-called “dream” tech firm with tons of one-upmanship into research. However, after reading your experience I kind of feel like that’s a distant dream.
I don't know about 3 years, but 4 years is pretty common in the computational world. Most professors will want at least two good papers (or the equivalent amount of work). You'll definitely get a lot of interest, it'll just seem weird that you want to get a PhD at this point in your career so it'll be important to give a good explanation in your personal statement (or whatever they ask for) for why you want to do this. I'm at a top school and the best student in my group (and one of the best in the entire field) is an older PhD student who decided to go back and get his PhD after being a staff scientist for many years. Everyone wants to work with him. I don't know how much age discrimination there is at the faculty level, but I'm pretty sure it won't be a big deal for you until then.
The rest depends on what you do, and what your goals are. If you're just trying to graduate with a PhD and get an industry job, that's one thing; if you're trying to become a professor, it often requires publishing in high impact journals and that can take more time (depending on what you're trying to do). And it also takes some luck, being in the right field at the right time.
I have to go so I can't say too much more, except that it might be difficult to anticipate potential roadblocks. For instance, my group does a lot of applied methods research (in statistical genetics), and a lot of time goes into finding and cleaning and understanding the right datasets to show your method works.
Gotta go.
Man, I really could've used this thread 5 years ago. I got a MS, worked 6 years, 5+ years on a PhD, still here, hopeless, a shell of my former professional self, struggling marriage, never see my kids. Who hires a dropout?
I will echo others here, and point out that 3 years is almost impossible in an American STEM PhD program. Even if you pick a highly productive lab with a supportive PI and dissertation committee, you will still likely spend the first year doing rotations in a few different labs to pick a mentor and project. This is typically a university requirement. During this time (and probably into the second year) it is also common to load up on classes to complete your coursework requirements. There is also typically a teaching assistantship requirement (even if you are funded) that lasts for a semester or a year. At a top 50 institution you won't have to teach more than that, and a small minority of programs don't have a teaching requirement at all.
Once you finish these steps, you will likely have to take a qualifying exam. The requirements are somewhat program specific, but generally you will write and defend a novel research proposal from a committee of established faculty. During all of this, (about a 2 year stretch by the time you pass the qualifying exam) maintaining a high degree of meaningful productivity in lab is a challenge. You will probably need a 2 more years minimum in the dissertation phase to complete a publishable body of work, take it through revisions, and write a dissertation.
It is also worth considering that even the best grad students do not land academic faculty positions right out of grad school. Despite your extensive experience, you will have to work as a post doc for some indeterminate amount of time that varies from field to field. This will require long hours, low pay, and the pressure to publish at least a couple of high impact papers before you will be ready to interview for a faculty position. It's a long road, but if you truly love science and are set on academia, I'm sure it will be worth it.
With my 6 year break between MS and PhD, I was strongly encouraged to take similar courses to what I had taken previously, plus a couple extra that were related to my dissertation topic. I wouldn't count on making up time on previous courses taken.
Thanks Prof for the clarity, inspirational to know about your student cohort.
I am glad you can relate to it. Was your spouse supportive when you started the program or was it your sole decision?
Thanks for the insight. So, you feel post doc is mandatory? Another thing I want to point is that a couple of Unis (including an ivy) have approached me recently to be a part-time faculty in machine learning. Do you feel going to these places for my PhD will speed up the process?
The replies are too negative.
I had to do multiple postdocs to get a position in chem, but people doing machine learning in comp sci are getting in without any postdoc experience.
The tenure process depends a lot on research productivity. I got projects going with two different agencies and ended up full prof in my eighth year. My salary doubled in the same amount of time. Without a postdoc, you would be greener and a likely a little slower to get going, but if you are passionate about the research that is the main thing. Don't do it otherwise.
As far as being a white male... we face some terrific obstacles, but somehow most of us still make it... translation? They pay a lot of lip service to diversity issues, but hire on research potential in the end.
Thanks Prof for the insight esp the last part (gives me hope!!)
Full prof wrote:
The replies are too negative.
I had to do multiple postdocs to get a position in chem, but people doing machine learning in comp sci are getting in without any postdoc experience.
The tenure process depends a lot on research productivity. I got projects going with two different agencies and ended up full prof in my eighth year. My salary doubled in the same amount of time. Without a postdoc, you would be greener and a likely a little slower to get going, but if you are passionate about the research that is the main thing. Don't do it otherwise.
As far as being a white male... we face some terrific obstacles, but somehow most of us still make it... translation? They pay a lot of lip service to diversity issues, but hire on research potential in the end.
A kind-of related question...why do people assume doing a postdoc is a bad thing? Sure your career is a bit more transient, but isn't it also a chance gain experience in a slightly different field and better prepare yourself to become a professor?
/mu/tant runner wrote:
A kind-of related question...why do people assume doing a postdoc is a bad thing? Sure your career is a bit more transient, but isn't it also a chance gain experience in a slightly different field and better prepare yourself to become a professor?
Generally the pay is quite bad considering you've got a PhD and would be earning far more in industry.
Looking back now, the postdoc experience was very valuable. However, it gets a bit miserable if you are doing more than one, it is dragging out, and you keep almost getting a real Prof position. Once you land the faculty job all is well.
A few friends gave up or compromised a bit in the end.