Why go to Grad School
From Unofficial Guide to Engineering
So you’re finished with three years, the fourth is looming ahead, and your mind turns away from the here and now and wanders into “what happens after I graduate?” Or perhaps you knew from the get-go that being a professor was your calling. Deciding to go to graduate school is a hefty decision with pretty big drawbacks but also pretty big advantages. Is it right for you? Besides the routes of law school or medical school, getting a graduate degree is the most common way to stay in school and out of the working world. You have two options: a master’s degree or a doctorate, though other options are possible, depending on the school. For the sake of brevity, we’ll only talk about the master’s and doctorate here.
A master’s degree gives youfdfadsfa an edge when looking for a job, as most of your competition only has a bachelor’s degree. For a mere one to two years, you can get this degree and have both a better chance at certain jobs and a better salary. Also, many employers lower their work experience requirement for applicants with a master’s, requiring say two years instead of five. The degree can either focus on coursework or on research, the latter requiring a master’s thesis, where the thesis is a scholarly report of your work on a research project. On the downside, usually you have to pay for a master’s degree, though some school will support you through research or teaching assistantships. Fellowships and scholarships are almost exclusively reserved for doctoral students. But if you can handle the extra years of school and you can afford it, giving up a year or two of salary may be worthwhile in the long run as you’ll get better opportunities in the job market.
Doctoral students in engineering are pursuing either a doctor of philosophy (PhD) or a doctor of science (ScD) – both are equivalent except in name. These titles allow you to call yourself Doctor so-and-so, and are a mark of scholarly prowess. Pretty much every professor at Cal or anywhere else has a PhD, so if you want to be a professor, this is the route for you. PhDs are required to spend four to six years in school, mostly working on a single research project. Successful completion of this task, which includes a longer thesis and a giant oral quiz (known as a thesis defense) in front of a few professors, earns you the stamp of approval from that school to carry out original, thoughtful, and creative research. Those with PhDs work at universities, government research labs (such as Sandia, LBL, and NASA), and in corporate environments, especially in research and development. It’s a long road, but the end result may be worth it if you are enamored of research. And to sweeten the deal, you almost never have to pay for it. You have the option of going for a PhD after a master’s, so if you’re unsure, you can always try out graduate school and decide about the PhD after a year or two.
