3 ms·
> 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
by 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 agoEveryone 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.