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How is completing a super advanced degree in a very specific field 'the bare minimum'? I feel like taking high school physics would be the bare minimum. Or may
by Loughla 5y ago
How is completing a super advanced degree in a very specific field 'the bare minimum'?
I feel like taking high school physics would be the bare minimum. Or maybe even getting a bachelor's. But a PhD? That's not the pinnacle of a career, by any means, but it's 100% the pinnacle of an educational experience.
>my biggest worry is being “old” by the time I complete any graduate education
There are 'old' students everywhere in college and graduate school. If you interact with any graduate students from not your home country, 99% of the time, they are much (read: a decade or two) older than the 'regular' student.
- ryan93 5y agoWrong. Most foreign PHDs are in their early to mid twenties when they start
- Loughla 5y agoWrong. The average age of international PhD students at entry to a program in the US is 31.7. [iie.org Graduate Learning Overseas Data].
- ryan93 5y agoThose people are just trying to gain admission to american jobs. The numbers are way different for the people with real research potential at top american schools.
- Loughla 5y agoThat's just moving the goalposts. Not really adding anything to the argument here. The argument is just graduate students, not subset of graduate students that is impossible to measure with any accuracy based on available data due to your completely arbitrary and nebulous definitions. Also, even if we take your new arbitrary and meaningless 'definition', we can no longer use the key word from the original discussion: ----most----. My point stands. Non-native graduate students skew older than native students by quite a bit.
- f6v 5y agoIn my field, doing a PhD at decent university means doing real-world scientific research. Despite widespread forced publication of mediocre results, I still see a PhD as a recognition of having “done science”.