juillet:
What does this mean in practice for you?
-In a master’s program, your program advisors are interested in doing career advising from day one because it makes the school look better if you have a job secured at graduation or quickly thereafter. In a PhD program, career advising doesn’t really begin at day one unless you have a really unusual advisor, and in fact, many advisors think it’s better to hold off on really tackling career discussions with their doctoral students until about year 3 or so. (The professors in this forum are excellent about being more proactive, but also - in my experience - unusual.) And in fact, sometimes asking about career stuff too early and too repeatedly, especially non-academic career stuff, can signal to a professor that you are “not serious” and thus not worth their time and investment.
-If research is not your passion and you are not interested in a research career, prepare to be disappointed and perhaps miserable. Doctoral students are expected to do research. You’ll likely have to serve as a research assistant for at least “20” hours a week (but 20 hours is rarely actually 20 hours), and you’ll be expected to chase the kind of milestones that are important for someone preparing for a research career: publications, presentations at conferences, brown bags, etc. You are going to be expected to do that instead of, not in addition to, non-academic professional career preparation. And in fact, many professors will consider any time spent doing non-academic career prep instead of research and writing as a waste of your time (and a signal that you are, again, “not serious.”)
-Master’s students who want a job will do well to do a summer internship somewhere, and perhaps even an internship during the academic year. In fact, your program will try to help you FIND one. Doctoral students are expected to do research during their first summer (especially since summer funding often comes directly out of someone’s research budget). Nine chances out of 10 you won’t be able to do a professional internship anywhere; your program may even forbid it. And 9.9 chances out of 10 you won’t be able to work part-time or do an internship during the academic year. You won’t have time, and your program may even prohibit it formally.
-Sometimes some programs have different classes for master’s and doctoral students. Mine did. The doctoral versions are usually more theoretical and less applied than the master’s classes, and they may be less useful to you. The master’s versions often have practica or simulations attached that you will miss out on as a doctoral student. Trying to take the master’s versions will at best get you long, unwanted conversations with your advisor and at worst blow your whole plan pretty easily.
-If you’re going to a professional program, the non-terminal master’s you get is often different from the master’s that the terminal students earn. For example, I got my PhD in public health. The non-terminal students got an MPH in my field, but the non-terminal master’s we earned was an MA. You could, theoretically, earn an MPH on the way to your PhD, but it was a lot of extra work and planning (different classes; see above) and again would earn an unwanted “talk” between you and your advisor.
This may be true at some schools or in some programs, but almost all of this could be wrong in others. In my department, terminal Master’s students and PhD students enrolled in the same exact classes, although the PhD students may have needed a few more total credits. Whether you intended to get a MS from the start like I did, or whether the MS was your consolation prize for an ABD, you still got the same exact same degree on your transcript. Professional career advice for terminal MS students was non-existent, except to see you graduated on schedule. If you wanted a summer internship, the department wasn’t going to help you find it or even suggest it was necessary. As a funded RA, I was responsible for research 20 hours/week just like the PhD students. There was very little difference in being a terminal MS student and a PhD student in their first two years of the program.