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I'm in the same boat - The PhD admissions proces over-indexes on Letters of Recommendation from other academics. I don't think I can get those because I have no
by hideo 8y ago
I'm in the same boat - The PhD admissions proces over-indexes on Letters of Recommendation from other academics. I don't think I can get those because I have not actively stayed in touch with my professors.
I went through the existing process once and promised myself I would never waste that much time again. But if there's a program that genuinely values industry experience, and is willing to look past recommendation letters from academics, I'd jump at it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Ar-Curunir 8y agoGet a Master's first; that way you can get a taste of whether you even like the field enough
- mxwsn 8y agoA significant number of PhDs drop out, and likely literally everyone undergoes some sort of huge realization of how doing a PhD is completely and surprisingly unlike what they expected (which is still true even with all the advice telling people that doing a PhD will be surprisingly unlike what you expect). Someone dropping out of a lab is a significant loss in time and resource investment which labs would prefer to avoid, and the biggest predictor for staying in a PhD is substantial experience doing research (to have some sense of what the lifestyle is like) and little experience with higher paying jobs (here at MIT, I see many PhD programs prefer people straight out of undergrad, even though older people are orders of magnitude more productive in the early phase of their PhD).