4 ms·

Maybe reaching out to international faculties in your field could be an idea? E.g., in Germany you get the entire spectrum from “be a professors slave for 6 ye

Maybe reaching out to international faculties in your field could be an idea? E.g., in Germany you get the entire spectrum from “be a professors slave for 6 years with minimum pay” to “I don’t care where you are - but the publications count”. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that there are quite a few professors in Europe who would be willing to guide you through (the relatively light weight bureaucracy) PhD process as long as you create and publish high quality research. Usually a PhD process requires SOME formal training (e.g., attending a fee seminars), peer-reviewed publications and a cumulative summary over your research. Personally I respect somebody who “freestyled” his way through PhD as measured by research output a lot. E.g., quite a few women take that route along with maternity leaves; which is great because of flexibility without compromise on quality. I mean, in CS, engineering, physics, there are plenty of areas where you don’t need a lab per se but can just simulate etc. I must admit that depending in the field interaction with fellow PhD students can be super great an valuable (that’s just gonna make life harder for you if you don’t take advantage of it). Good luck!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jsinai 6y ago
>Personally I respect somebody who “freestyled” his way through PhD as measured by research output a lot. E.g., quite a few women take that route along with maternity leaves Nitpick: You may want to change "his way" to the gender neutral "their way" especially since you use women taking maternity leave as an example. :)
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Absolutely fair!
pleasecalllater 6y ago
> E.g., in Germany you get the entire spectrum from “be a professors slave for 6 years with minimum pay” to “I don’t care where you are - but the publications count”. Yea... I wanted to start PhD this year. Unfortunately it turned out that the only thing that counts, are my previous and future publications. Any work experience seems like a disadvantage. They value more someone with no experience, but with a couple of, usually not very inventive, publications. I have over 18 years of work experience. I used to make more complicated things at work, than you can find in many published papers or even PhDs. So I asked a professor about how to start it. It turned out that: the pay is much below the minimum salary + I will be thrown away if I won't have one publication in a good journal after the first year. If you also think that after sending a paper to a journal, they usually reply in six-nine months with a rejection or a list of comments to fix... it turned out that I have to start my PhD with a bunch of papers already written. And to have them count, they need to be exactly about the same topic as my PhD. So, after rethinking all this, I stopped dreaming about a PhD. I can publish my paper on arXiv without all the academic fun.
- ntwalker 6y ago
  This feels basically exactly like my experience too this year and last. I even had a professor tell me straight up when I emailed him that I basically wouldn’t get in since he already had prospective students with publications in the exact area reach out to him. I’ve kind of realized that without a string of publications ahead of time you’re basically out of the game before you even try. It’s like you have to have done PhD level work before you can do the PhD. It’s left me totally lost on what to do from here, getting a PhD has been a life dream for me so it’s hard to ditch the idea. I guess we might be in the same boat.
  - bananaquant 6y ago
    Don't despair. PhD life looks good from the outside because all parties involved (students, professors, administrators) have incentives to make it look good. The reality can be much different. Besides, you've got to think how would you use this degree after you finish. Inside academia, you will be locked in a job with a mid-low salary with scarce options to advance. Outside of academia, PhD is less valued than most people think. I know quite a few people who do great research in the industry with only a BSc degree.
    - ntwalker 6y ago
      The big draw for me is to be able to actually invent and innovate and not just implement old ideas over and over in a boring corporate space. All the exciting research jobs I see in my field (NLP) require a PhD, so I feel like I'll hit a career ceiling at some point and be implementing boring corporate solutions for the rest of my life and never really innovating. But as you say, appearances can be deceptive and it's like the grass is always greener, so maybe I need to broaden my horizons somehow. It's definitely hard to find that path at the moment though. Edit: Oh and I do have to admit the fancy title that lets me feel like I'm truly educated and learned, and satisfies credentialism in the world is a draw too... Peer pressure is a hell of a drug
      - bananaquant 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jsinai 6y ago

>Personally I respect somebody who “freestyled” his way through PhD as measured by research output a lot. E.g., quite a few women take that route along with maternity leaves Nitpick: You may want to change "his way" to the gender neutral "their way" especially since you use women taking maternity leave as an example. :)

looping__lui 6y ago
Absolutely fair!

pleasecalllater 6y ago

> E.g., in Germany you get the entire spectrum from “be a professors slave for 6 years with minimum pay” to “I don’t care where you are - but the publications count”. Yea... I wanted to start PhD this year. Unfortunately it turned out that the only thing that counts, are my previous and future publications. Any work experience seems like a disadvantage. They value more someone with no experience, but with a couple of, usually not very inventive, publications. I have over 18 years of work experience. I used to make more complicated things at work, than you can find in many published papers or even PhDs. So I asked a professor about how to start it. It turned out that: the pay is much below the minimum salary + I will be thrown away if I won't have one publication in a good journal after the first year. If you also think that after sending a paper to a journal, they usually reply in six-nine months with a rejection or a list of comments to fix... it turned out that I have to start my PhD with a bunch of papers already written. And to have them count, they need to be exactly about the same topic as my PhD. So, after rethinking all this, I stopped dreaming about a PhD. I can publish my paper on arXiv without all the academic fun.

ntwalker 6y ago
This feels basically exactly like my experience too this year and last. I even had a professor tell me straight up when I emailed him that I basically wouldn’t get in since he already had prospective students with publications in the exact area reach out to him. I’ve kind of realized that without a string of publications ahead of time you’re basically out of the game before you even try. It’s like you have to have done PhD level work before you can do the PhD. It’s left me totally lost on what to do from here, getting a PhD has been a life dream for me so it’s hard to ditch the idea. I guess we might be in the same boat.
- bananaquant 6y ago
  Don't despair. PhD life looks good from the outside because all parties involved (students, professors, administrators) have incentives to make it look good. The reality can be much different. Besides, you've got to think how would you use this degree after you finish. Inside academia, you will be locked in a job with a mid-low salary with scarce options to advance. Outside of academia, PhD is less valued than most people think. I know quite a few people who do great research in the industry with only a BSc degree.
  - ntwalker 6y ago
    The big draw for me is to be able to actually invent and innovate and not just implement old ideas over and over in a boring corporate space. All the exciting research jobs I see in my field (NLP) require a PhD, so I feel like I'll hit a career ceiling at some point and be implementing boring corporate solutions for the rest of my life and never really innovating. But as you say, appearances can be deceptive and it's like the grass is always greener, so maybe I need to broaden my horizons somehow. It's definitely hard to find that path at the moment though. Edit: Oh and I do have to admit the fancy title that lets me feel like I'm truly educated and learned, and satisfies credentialism in the world is a draw too... Peer pressure is a hell of a drug
    - bananaquant 6y ago