4 ms·

Unsubstantiated hearsay. How does a Master's imply you are a PhD dropout? Plenty of people go with the expectation of only Master's to begin with. Heck, this d

Unsubstantiated hearsay. How does a Master's imply you are a PhD dropout? Plenty of people go with the expectation of only Master's to begin with. Heck, this distinction is even made when you enroll in the Master's program in Stanford CS instead of the PhD program. They are treated as different tracks that you can't move between.

analog31 8y ago
When I was a physics undergrad student, I remember being told by advisors that a Master's was considered to be a booby prize. We were told that grad programs would only consider students who indicated an interest in a PhD. One possible reason is that grad student funding was limited, and they didn't want to waste it on students who weren't going to contribute to research. All physics grad students were fully funded. I'm not sure this is true today. So far as I could tell, this was strictly limited to physics. My graduate program was almost exclusively PhD students, and the terminal Master's was used as an escape hatch. On the other hand, those students did just fine in the job market, so it could be just a peculiarity of the academic culture that is not reflected outside of the academe. Working in industry after my degree, I encountered people with Masters in physics, who were doing just fine, and they did not strike me as inferior -- they just didn't want to stay for a PhD.
- m463 8y ago
  I kind of suspect there's a possible bias from the advisor. It could be on behalf of their employer - they have a shortage of a certain class of student at the university. or it could like engineers who too easily recommend extremely over-powered computers for friends and family not in the industry who are thinking about buying a computer.
  - analog31 8y ago
    It was pretty widespread. PhD students generally outnumbered MS students, fairly substantially. I went to a second tier program, and there were zero MS students. It wasn't a thing. My own college didn't have a graduate program. This was based on multiple advisors having similar expectations about applying for grad school.

analog31 8y ago

When I was a physics undergrad student, I remember being told by advisors that a Master's was considered to be a booby prize. We were told that grad programs would only consider students who indicated an interest in a PhD. One possible reason is that grad student funding was limited, and they didn't want to waste it on students who weren't going to contribute to research. All physics grad students were fully funded. I'm not sure this is true today. So far as I could tell, this was strictly limited to physics. My graduate program was almost exclusively PhD students, and the terminal Master's was used as an escape hatch. On the other hand, those students did just fine in the job market, so it could be just a peculiarity of the academic culture that is not reflected outside of the academe. Working in industry after my degree, I encountered people with Masters in physics, who were doing just fine, and they did not strike me as inferior -- they just didn't want to stay for a PhD.

m463 8y ago
I kind of suspect there's a possible bias from the advisor. It could be on behalf of their employer - they have a shortage of a certain class of student at the university. or it could like engineers who too easily recommend extremely over-powered computers for friends and family not in the industry who are thinking about buying a computer.
- analog31 8y ago
  It was pretty widespread. PhD students generally outnumbered MS students, fairly substantially. I went to a second tier program, and there were zero MS students. It wasn't a thing. My own college didn't have a graduate program. This was based on multiple advisors having similar expectations about applying for grad school.