Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

I got a job programming for a research group at a college when I was 40 and worked there for 20 years. The work was an education in itself. I built a Beowulf cluster, electronically herded cows, designed wireless sensor systems, built opportunistic sensing systems, worked on security systems, medical systems, and a lot more and was exposed to a lot more peripherally (sociology, psychology, medicine, robotics). I didn't work on a degree but if I'd wanted to they made it easy to do and other people around me did. In the years before I left a fellow in his 60's applied for the PhD program and I worked with him for some years. He got his PhD based on work designing secure wireless transfer protocols/systems using near field RF. What made it possible was our boss was willing to accommodate his life (daughter in school, family life, etc.) instead of demanding servitude like most advisors demand of their grad students. In part, age gets you some respect, though not all advisors will be willing to do that, so you would need to find a good advisor. If you work for them first for a year to two before starting a PhD that gives you chance to figure out if you are mutually compatible (and to get to know others in the department in case you are not.) Be warned though that academic work is very different from industry work. You may never finish most projects only building proof-of-concepts, and in some ways it's like being in a startup where you have to do some of everything (work with students, purchasing, web research, hacking hardware, grant writing, building slide decks, figuring how to do things no one else has ever tried to do with systems that were never intended for it.) Often paths are abandoned if they don't work out quickly. Student code can be atrocious and you may have to use and modify it after the student leaves. People come and go, projects come and go, funding comes and goes, nothing is permanent. As a grad student you'll probably have to do some teaching and lesson grading as well.

Did it. $70k+, nights and weekends for three and half years to earn an MBA and the knowledge gained from the guided instruction was absolutely worth it.

Advice: 1. Get buy-in from your spouse (if you have one) before starting. 2. If you need an entrance exam (e.g., GMAT, GRE, etc...) consider applying for an exception from admissions. (I wrote a letter explaining how my practical work/life experience qualified and it worked.)

My advice is to just go for it. I’m 2 years into a part time JD program that lasts 4 years, and I’ll tell you what my father told me as I considered whether to enroll: years ago he said to his therapist, “I’m really not sure about starting a PhD this late; I’ll be almost 40 when I graduate” and his therapist said “You’re going to be 40 anyway.”

I am sixty-five, and I will be retiring soon as a professor at a university in Japan. This has been my second career; previously, I had been a freelancer for twenty years.

In the past twelve years or so, I have supervised about fifteen master’s and Ph.D. students, and I have served on committees for maybe two dozen more. The fields have been linguistics, language education, lexicography, translation studies, etc. Most of the students have been in their twenties, but some have been in their forties or older. One of my students who finished his Ph.D. successfully earlier this year is a year older than me.

Overall, the older students who were admitted to our programs have been more successful at sticking with their studies and eventually finishing. Younger students seem more likely to hit roadblocks in their graduate studies: they might become disillusioned with academia or the prospect of an academic career, or marriage and childbirth might make them need to focus on supporting their family. While life events can interfere with older students’ studies, too—several of my students had to take breaks for a while to take care of an aging parent—overall the older ones seem to have been better able to balance their studies with their personal lives.

The life and work experience that the older students bring with them is, overall, a plus both for them and for the younger students they interact with. It often takes time, though, for older students to learn how to think more abstractly and objectively about issues they dealt in the workplace. Often their motivation for graduate study is to study some practical problem they dealt with at work, and they often think that they already know the solution. Getting them to think about the issue as a researcher and to realize that their research should contribute not only practical solutions but also deeper theoretical insights has sometimes been a challenge for me. But, overall, the older students have been quite successful, and I have enjoyed working with them.

I went for my second Masters at 43 thinking it would be a breeze knowing how to better focus. First semester I barely passed and decided to take the next semester after a break which stretto an year. It took me 5 years to complete a graduate degree. I would not underestimate the value of discipline with health, attention duration one can afford with kids and family or relationships. Be more forgiving to yourself if kids half your age tend to be able to arrive at answer faster.