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Some more nuggets of advice about grad school that I heard or came up with grad school friends over my decade (this mainly applying to engineering programs): 1

Some more nuggets of advice about grad school that I heard or came up with grad school friends over my decade (this mainly applying to engineering programs): 1. It’s almost always okay to quit. Quitting grad school is probably the smarter decision to make for the majority of grad students even if it’s two years before graduation. Your sanity and self worth are more important and surprisingly your career success follows. 2. You can have a work life balance if you are either extremely lucky with your project and advisors, or you’re off the books smart (like you can read an entire book overnight smart). Some fields (computer related) might be exempt. 3. Unless you’re trying to also use it as an immigration ticket to a 1st world country, if you can’t make it to a top school (top 20 for US, 5 elsewhere), don’t bother. A masters would end up taking your career to a higher place in the same time you spend on a mediocre phd. 4. Don’t marry another grad student! (This was unsolicited advice from a professor friend lol; mainly with regards to the difficulty of finding jobs in the same town for both people, one of you will be compromising). 5. As the article says, if you’re already an anxious person or having other issues in life (parents to take care, complicated family situations, if you have a spouse having a spouse who’s not there to take care of everything at home, significant money issues, etc) then grad school is that much harder. Unless you really want to prove yourself to someone it’s not gonna be fun in all likelihood. Note that the majority of the professors you see would typically have had a fairly privileged upbringing, if not in terms of wealth at least in terms of a stable supporting family. 6. If you’re not poor and are bored with things in life, and are certifiably smart and are generally stable up there in your head, then grad school is definitely a great experience. Especially in sciences. You learn a lot of life lessons and honestly the rest of your career would be a cakewalk no matter what you decide to do. While many many people around me absolutely struggled and suffered through grad school, I and a few of my friends absolutely loved it even though we went through one of the worst labs you can find in operation today. I will not advice it for anyone but at the same time I do not regret a single moment in that choice for myself. 7. Don’t get cancer, or MS, or have your lung collapsed. Your advisor won’t like it and 50% chance they will try to get you fired.

zhdc1 5y ago
> It’s almost always okay to quit. Quitting grad school is probably the smarter decision to make for the majority of grad students even if it’s two years before graduation. Your sanity and self worth are more important and surprisingly your career success follows. This, although it depends on if you're in a terminal graduate program or you're going for your PhD. If you only have a year left to get your MA, try to stick with it if you can. > Unless you’re trying to also use it as an immigration ticket to a 1st world country, if you can’t make it to a top school (top 20 for US, 5 elsewhere), don’t bother. A masters would end up taking your career to a higher place in the same time you spend on a mediocre phd. Not true. You're much better off doing a PhD under a respected advisor at a lower ranked institution than you are doing a PhD under a less capable advisor at a top ranked institution.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Everyone joining a lower ranked institution thinks the same - they’ll simply go to one of the top labs! But then turns out so does everyone and a lot of times the top labs don’t even take that many students! This is like saying every med student can choose to become exactly what specialist they want.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    > Everyone joining a lower ranked institution thinks the same - they’ll simply go to one of the top labs! They do? Generally you know what group or lab you're joining before you start your PhD, since university administrators want to know who's paying for your salary. > This is like saying every med student can choose to become exactly what specialist they want. No, but having a computer vision expert as your advisor, presenting conference papers on computer vision, and writing your dissertation on computer vision increases your odds of getting a post doc doing research in computer vision.
joconde 5y ago
> Unless you’re trying to also use it as an immigration ticket to a 1st world country, if you can’t make it to a top school (top 20 for US, 5 elsewhere), don’t bother. Every qualified person I've heard talk about this said the opposite. "Top-20 school" isn't how professors or large industry labs evaluate a PhD, they will look at the advisor's reputation and the specific lab. > A masters would end up taking your career to a higher place in the same time you spend on a mediocre phd. 1. This is definitely wrong for someone aiming for research jobs. If we're talking about accumulating money irrespective of the job, then sure, a master is probably better. 2. A "mediocre" PhD is obviously a bad thing career-wise, but if your definition of "mediocre" is "from a non-top-20 school", that definition is absurd. Maybe your comments stem from going "through one of the worst labs you can find in operation today". Or maybe it's US-specific, I don't know.
- dopu 5y ago
  > Every qualified person I've heard talk about this said the opposite. "Top-20 school" isn't how professors or large industry labs evaluate a PhD, they will look at the advisor's reputation and the specific lab. While I think this is technically true, academics care a great deal about pedigree, in the “he/she went to $FAMOUSLAB, they must be a great scientist” kind of way. The most productive, well-funded, and well-known labs tend to be at the top institutions. I wish it wasn’t this way, but that’s how it is. If you want to maximize your chances of being successful in academia post-PhD, then you have to go to one of these places. For industry, I don’t think it matters as much.
- laGrenouille 5y ago
  > if your definition of "mediocre" is "from a non-top-20 school", that definition is absurd. My guess is that they are talking about a program that is Top-20 in a particular field, or even large sub-field, rather than the overall university ranking. This can be quite different than an overall ranking. For example, SUNY Stonebrook and University of Minnesota are powerhouses in topology and combinatorics, respectively, but certainly not amongst the most prestegious in other fields. With the qualifier of "within a a field", this comment is far from absurd. The exact cut-off, of course, differs from field to field. In Near Eastern Languages, don't waste your time outside the Top-3. In CS, even graduates from programs in the Top-50 have a chance a faculty job.
tuzed 5y ago
Unfortunately, I have to confirm #7. One of the students that started their program with me has gone through exactly this. It was especially jarring when a neurodegenerative disease researcher reacted with hostility to a student’s diagnosis of MS. Unfortunately, even though academics are smart, highly educated people, this does not guarantee interpersonal and management skills, or empathy. Equally frustrating is that even with the support of your department and institution, a soured relationship with your academic advisor can still ruin your time in graduate school. I think most students pick their supervisor using the heuristics of prestige or academic “productivity”, but a bigger contributor to a students grad school success is probably the soft skills which get often overlooked in academics.
fastaguy88 5y ago
The "Top-20 school" is bad advice for disciplines (like life sciences) where the expectation is that you will do a post-doc. There are post-docs at high profile institutions that came from lesser known schools, but had a great graduate career, pubs, and recommendations. In those fields, your post-doc is at least as important as your graduate school. And most good life sciences departments do not offer a Masters program -- you get a masters if you decide at some point to stop pursuing the PhD. Most Master's programs cost money, and, at least in the life-sciences, you are better off working in the field (CS may be very different).
- ramraj07 5y ago
  A Postdoc in a higher school than where you graduated is definitely par for course, but honestly it’s one more gambling step with at best 30% chance of netting you a good academic career. Your postdoc can still be underwhelming and also unless your PhD was stellar, you’re not betting a postdoc in a top lab anyway. The point is, given that you can’t explicitly choose the lab you want to do a PhD in, it’s just better to try and increase your chances by going to a top institution. If that’s already a hard proposition then the competition only keeps getting worse over time.

zhdc1 5y ago

> It’s almost always okay to quit. Quitting grad school is probably the smarter decision to make for the majority of grad students even if it’s two years before graduation. Your sanity and self worth are more important and surprisingly your career success follows. This, although it depends on if you're in a terminal graduate program or you're going for your PhD. If you only have a year left to get your MA, try to stick with it if you can. > Unless you’re trying to also use it as an immigration ticket to a 1st world country, if you can’t make it to a top school (top 20 for US, 5 elsewhere), don’t bother. A masters would end up taking your career to a higher place in the same time you spend on a mediocre phd. Not true. You're much better off doing a PhD under a respected advisor at a lower ranked institution than you are doing a PhD under a less capable advisor at a top ranked institution.

ramraj07 5y ago
Everyone joining a lower ranked institution thinks the same - they’ll simply go to one of the top labs! But then turns out so does everyone and a lot of times the top labs don’t even take that many students! This is like saying every med student can choose to become exactly what specialist they want.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  > Everyone joining a lower ranked institution thinks the same - they’ll simply go to one of the top labs! They do? Generally you know what group or lab you're joining before you start your PhD, since university administrators want to know who's paying for your salary. > This is like saying every med student can choose to become exactly what specialist they want. No, but having a computer vision expert as your advisor, presenting conference papers on computer vision, and writing your dissertation on computer vision increases your odds of getting a post doc doing research in computer vision.

joconde 5y ago

> Unless you’re trying to also use it as an immigration ticket to a 1st world country, if you can’t make it to a top school (top 20 for US, 5 elsewhere), don’t bother. Every qualified person I've heard talk about this said the opposite. "Top-20 school" isn't how professors or large industry labs evaluate a PhD, they will look at the advisor's reputation and the specific lab. > A masters would end up taking your career to a higher place in the same time you spend on a mediocre phd. 1. This is definitely wrong for someone aiming for research jobs. If we're talking about accumulating money irrespective of the job, then sure, a master is probably better. 2. A "mediocre" PhD is obviously a bad thing career-wise, but if your definition of "mediocre" is "from a non-top-20 school", that definition is absurd. Maybe your comments stem from going "through one of the worst labs you can find in operation today". Or maybe it's US-specific, I don't know.

dopu 5y ago
> Every qualified person I've heard talk about this said the opposite. "Top-20 school" isn't how professors or large industry labs evaluate a PhD, they will look at the advisor's reputation and the specific lab. While I think this is technically true, academics care a great deal about pedigree, in the “he/she went to $FAMOUSLAB, they must be a great scientist” kind of way. The most productive, well-funded, and well-known labs tend to be at the top institutions. I wish it wasn’t this way, but that’s how it is. If you want to maximize your chances of being successful in academia post-PhD, then you have to go to one of these places. For industry, I don’t think it matters as much.
laGrenouille 5y ago
> if your definition of "mediocre" is "from a non-top-20 school", that definition is absurd. My guess is that they are talking about a program that is Top-20 in a particular field, or even large sub-field, rather than the overall university ranking. This can be quite different than an overall ranking. For example, SUNY Stonebrook and University of Minnesota are powerhouses in topology and combinatorics, respectively, but certainly not amongst the most prestegious in other fields. With the qualifier of "within a a field", this comment is far from absurd. The exact cut-off, of course, differs from field to field. In Near Eastern Languages, don't waste your time outside the Top-3. In CS, even graduates from programs in the Top-50 have a chance a faculty job.

tuzed 5y ago

Unfortunately, I have to confirm #7. One of the students that started their program with me has gone through exactly this. It was especially jarring when a neurodegenerative disease researcher reacted with hostility to a student’s diagnosis of MS. Unfortunately, even though academics are smart, highly educated people, this does not guarantee interpersonal and management skills, or empathy. Equally frustrating is that even with the support of your department and institution, a soured relationship with your academic advisor can still ruin your time in graduate school. I think most students pick their supervisor using the heuristics of prestige or academic “productivity”, but a bigger contributor to a students grad school success is probably the soft skills which get often overlooked in academics.

fastaguy88 5y ago

The "Top-20 school" is bad advice for disciplines (like life sciences) where the expectation is that you will do a post-doc. There are post-docs at high profile institutions that came from lesser known schools, but had a great graduate career, pubs, and recommendations. In those fields, your post-doc is at least as important as your graduate school. And most good life sciences departments do not offer a Masters program -- you get a masters if you decide at some point to stop pursuing the PhD. Most Master's programs cost money, and, at least in the life-sciences, you are better off working in the field (CS may be very different).

ramraj07 5y ago
A Postdoc in a higher school than where you graduated is definitely par for course, but honestly it’s one more gambling step with at best 30% chance of netting you a good academic career. Your postdoc can still be underwhelming and also unless your PhD was stellar, you’re not betting a postdoc in a top lab anyway. The point is, given that you can’t explicitly choose the lab you want to do a PhD in, it’s just better to try and increase your chances by going to a top institution. If that’s already a hard proposition then the competition only keeps getting worse over time.