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Advice for Prospective PhD Students

gonzales.science

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Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#21

Post by scoobitydoobap »

flashback2199 wrote: post #17

If you live in the US, have the ability to work in the US, and have a stem degree, the opportunity cost of a PhD is just way too high, many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Technically, one could do the PhD in the UK where PhD is 3 years, to minimize that opportunity cost, but not by much.

Yes, unless that PhD puts you on an earnings track where you can quickly make up for a few lost years of wages and saving. Otherwise, the compounding effect of having missed investing a few hundred thousand dollars _at a young age_ is substantial.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#22

Post by the_snooze »

synergy20 wrote: post #18

I stopped reading the original post and the comments here as my brain stuck at PI, what the heck is that? Not all the readers are PhDs and PI is 3.14 or Raspberry to me these days.

Principal investigator. i.e., the person in contractually in charge of a research effort, often used as a shorthand for a supervising professor who heads up a lab and advises PhD students.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#23

Post by dmitris »

the_snooze wrote: post #22
synergy20 wrote: post #18

I stopped reading the original post and the comments here as my brain stuck at PI, what the heck is that? Not all the readers are PhDs and PI is 3.14 or Raspberry to me these days.

Principal investigator. i.e., the person in contractually in charge of a research effort, often used as a shorthand for a supervising professor who heads up a lab and advises PhD students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#24

Post by jakeinspace »

testcrash12345 wrote: post #7

Having seen what my partner has been through in her PhD in generics in the UK. I can certainly advice against doing it. PhDs are not worth the stress your will be through. You are barely paid to get by. PhD students are exploited left and right. The whole concept is not suitable for what's life in 2023. If you have a toxic colleague at a workspace you can do something about it, change team, change your manager, chang…

They are worth it if you’re trying to emigrate out of a bad situation. My partner is in a lab with an awful PI, but she is Lebanese, and wanted to be able to bring herself and her family out of a very unstable situation.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#25

Post by orochimaaru »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #5

I feel like this article is missing a gigantic point: your PI is everything as a PhD student, if you have a PI who’s a shitty person (sometimes even unknowingly), you are going to be in hell for four to seven years. Don’t pick your PI just based on «they seem to be at the forefront of research on this field », also check how they treat their students. This is not like a normal job where you can easily quit, you’re li…

From my experience

1. Don’t opt for a phd just because it sounds cool (remember the first tweet shared in that article).

2. Academia is a pretty hard space if you can’t get your own funding or if you don’t like hustling for it. Getting tenure track jobs without having funding attached is impossible.

3. Very few jobs in industry need a PhD. Most are ok with a masters. Those that require a PhD can be selective based on where you graduate from and what your publication record is.

4. Know your PI well and reach out to his/her previous students who have already graduated. Some may reply - especially those with a bad experience.

5. Back to point #1, don’t take up the PhD just because you get the assistance and stipend. Make sure you really like your subject - it’s the only thing you’re doing for the next 4-12 years depending on your discipline while subsisting on poverty level stipends

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#26

Post by digging »

Since it seems just about everybody who's been in or around a PhD program agrees it's a miserable institution with low chances of satisfaction, I will continue to follow the advice that it is not for me.

However, are there alternative paths to a research career? I really enjoyed being in an academic environment in undergrad and dream of working on AI/ML research in some capacity, but I'm a total outsider.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#27

Post by michaelrpeskin »

scoobitydoobap wrote: post #21
flashback2199 wrote: post #17

If you live in the US, have the ability to work in the US, and have a stem degree, the opportunity cost of a PhD is just way too high, many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Technically, one could do the PhD in the UK where PhD is 3 years, to minimize that opportunity cost, but not by much.

Yes, unless that PhD puts you on an earnings track where you can quickly make up for a few lost years of wages and saving. Otherwise, the compounding effect of having missed investing a few hundred thousand dollars _at a young age_ is substantial.

Yes, this is a hard calculation to make.

A couple of years ago I would also have said that a PhD is not worth the opportunity cost. I look back to the the time when my wife and I were both fresh out of college and in our PhD programs. We lived _very_ frugally. After housing, food (all cooked ourselves, no take-out or eat-out), transportation (had to live outside of the city), we had maybe $100-$200 left over each month (in 2000-2004 dollars). We had no money to set aside for retirement or investments. We did take out interest free student loans and put them in a CD and paid them back immediately after we graduated, so that helped provide a little investment income. We worked hard to scrape by on a poverty-level stipend without going into debt.

Shortly after we got real jobs, I looked at our friends who went to industry right after college and they were significantly better off, and continued to be better for a quite a while (that whole compounding rewards things).

However, now that I'm senior in my position (real senior, not SV senior label), I have much more stability in my job than my non-PhD friends have. The PhD is pretty valuable for the work I do, and that keeps me as the lead on most of our contracts.

I can't say if I would be better of right now if I went to industry right away and started making money and savings, or if the stability has put me in a better place.

I don't have the massive income as an SV tech job, but I have also never been cut at a layoff, so I don't have to worry about the variability in income.

As an aside, I will say that a PhD is non-trivial and you should probably only consider it if you _love_ the field. If you're just using it to buy yourself some time or to live off the stipend because you can't find work, you probably won't have a fun time.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#28

Post by jncfhnb »

bee_rider wrote: post #11
jncfhnb wrote: post #2

I would just flat out advise against it. Don’t set your life up for a dice roll on which PI you get. It can be good. It can be bad. But it’s not a wise gamble for any aspect of life quality that I think is particularly wise to orient towards.

I’d instead say: * talk to your PI beforehand obviously, so you can see if they are a jerk * keep an eye on the failure mode. Check if you are making real progress after a year or two. If not, mastering out in a STEM field a totally legit path that will still leave you with a perfectly decent career potential. Some places will even let you do a thesis with your masters if you for some reason love writing giant LaTeX…

(1) is hard. Very hard. Plenty of people are nice but psychotic.

(2) is mixed. There’s a lot of science that doesn’t care about masters at all. And for many people it is extremely soul sucking to master out.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#29

Post by nyssos »

orochimaaru wrote: post #25
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #5

I feel like this article is missing a gigantic point: your PI is everything as a PhD student, if you have a PI who’s a shitty person (sometimes even unknowingly), you are going to be in hell for four to seven years. Don’t pick your PI just based on «they seem to be at the forefront of research on this field », also check how they treat their students. This is not like a normal job where you can easily quit, you’re li…

From my experience 1. Don’t opt for a phd just because it sounds cool (remember the first tweet shared in that article). 2. Academia is a pretty hard space if you can’t get your own funding or if you don’t like hustling for it. Getting tenure track jobs without having funding attached is impossible. 3. Very few jobs in industry need a PhD. Most are ok with a masters. Those that require a PhD can be selective based on…

> Very few jobs in industry need a PhD. Most are ok with a masters.

This varies dramatically by field.

Re: Advice for Prospective PhD Students

#30

Post by etrautmann »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #5

I feel like this article is missing a gigantic point: your PI is everything as a PhD student, if you have a PI who’s a shitty person (sometimes even unknowingly), you are going to be in hell for four to seven years. Don’t pick your PI just based on «they seem to be at the forefront of research on this field », also check how they treat their students. This is not like a normal job where you can easily quit, you’re li…

Yes - this is unfortunately everything. There are a number of categories to optimize (research area, lab size, funding, university, other lab members, etc) but the biggest factor is your relationship with your PI. I cannot imagine working as a PhD student in a lab where I don't deeply respect and get along with the PI. I was very lucky but selected for this when choosing PhD labs. A surefire way to have a terrible few years is to ignore others advice about PIs to avoid.
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