It’s more like 18-20 if you’re on fellowship, 12-14 on RA/TAships if you’re a phd and a nice fat 25k/year (at most private schools) tuition bill if you’re a master’s student.
Also, if you make the cut and get into a PhD program, you can basically walk out any time after the first year or two with a fully paid for MS.
Going through a similar process (residency) but at one time was contemplating going into grad school.
My advice is to try to figure out what you are interested (the more specific the better) then find the places that are doing that… then find the labs that are doing that… Whatever you do be sure to carefully scrutinize a lab’s track record with their grad students… Are they finishing in a reasonable time, is the PI involved or off doing other things you do not want to be the proverbial 8th year grad student who can’t graduate becuase the PI wants to keep them around for the labor or because they have a mean streak (unfortunately common occurence)
Good luck
“…PhD students (in engineering) get grants (ie, get paid to go to school) and MS students get loans…”
While that was (unfortunately) true in my case (MSEE-BME, '01), I think it’s more true that you need to be sure you are working on a funded project in graduate school or else apply for your own grant money. What this means, of course, is that you have to know probably within your first semester what your specialty and focus of study will be. Since (I assume) you were ME or BME undergrad, do you prefer statics, dynamics, fluidics, or materials? Think about it basically at first because each route leads to a different end (even though they’re very inter-related), be it prosthetics, orthopedics, circulatory dynamics, or what-have-you. You seem to have it somewhat narrowed down already (as your choice is schools has narrowed), but don’t forget that an MS is still a broad degree, but a PhD is quite a bit more focused, the topic of which very likely will dictate your future career.
Well, I am applying to graduate school at 50 1/2 years of age. I’ll be attending the U.S.A.F. Air War College full time starting in July 2005 until May 2006. Will get a Master of Strategic Studies degree. Not sure what I’ll do with it yet, if anything. Maybe a different job/promotion in my future, maybe not.
Well you are rejecting my advice, but that’s fine. Through the course of the discussion it appears as though you are a little closer to situation I recommend, than originally indicated. There are RAs out there for MS students, just not as many as for Ph.D. students. Anyway, good luck, and continued success in the future.
I am currently finishing up grad school right now, working on my thesis (Molec Bio) and hoping to finish in a few months. I don’t have much time to reply now and you have already got a lot of good advice so I will throw in my thoughts and maybe some more later.
Don’t bother applying for a MS program in science, not worth it. You will pay to go to school and if you decide to go for a Phd you usually start over, you will be in school for 7-8 yrs instead of 4-5. You can always leave the PhD program with an MS if you decied the PhD isn’t the thing for you.
Go to a school with lots of choices in the filed of interest that way you have more then one advisor/lab to choose from. If you pick a school because of one lab and that advisor is an ass then you are SOL.
In graduate school, the name/rep of your advisor is more important the the name of the school.
You are going to be in school for a long time making very little mony so make sure that you enjoy the work, the lab, and the advisor.
Have fun, feel free to ask me any questions.
Andrew
Well, my advice (3rd year PhD student in neuroscience) would be to settle down a bit. You sound to me like a pre-med student. They have it bad. We have it good. The schools want grad students, we are cheep labor for them. They know it, and they don’t hide it. It isn’t clear if your “visits” have been interviews (generally called recruitment within the schools). I assume you are just going to visit on your own. During the actual recruitment weekends, you should see that they truly are courting you, minimally interviewing you.
My advice about picking a school is that you must be confidant that will figure it out as you go along. You have done the right thing: apply to 10 schools with impressive names in locations you might want to live. The next step is mostly done too, find the labs that sounds intellectually interesting to you at each of these schools. I think you should have 3-5 picked out that are moderately interesting at each school (do your programs have rotations that you must do)? These labs must be highly regarded by people in your field. Enlist the help of one of your undergrad professors. Their opinions of the lab’s reputation are very important.
Then, you wait for interview offers. It sounds like you will get them. Then you go visit. During your visits then, you will meet the general student and faculty population in your program. You will either have fun, or not. If you have fun, maybe you will have fun for however long you are going to be there (a long time, remember). That is important. Since you already started with good schools with good labs, now you pick from them ones where you will be happy. You must consider your happiness! This is a long hard road, for even the most exuberant undergrads.
The other thing, is that no, you are not locked in to a certain subfield once you get your PhD in a certain lab. It is important to do good science and show that you can. Then you can change quite a bit after that. In my experience people almost always change to some degree after grad school. It is part of the process of maturing as a scientist. Take your skills to solve a new problem.
Those are my thoughts for what it is worth. PM me if you want more opinion or have questions of me.
Above all, good luck and have fun—it should be fun, so you can have fun for the next x years of your life.
harp