Master's degree to work in robotics

teriwtt
Tue, 14 Jul 2015 00:40:35 +0000

@rancek - LOL - I JUST sent him an email with basically that information before reading your post. When H came home tonight, I told him about our conversation today, and H actually has a good contact with a guy at work who did his undergrad, master’s, and Ph.D. at MIT in engineering, but is involved in robotics at the major pharmaceutical he and H work at. H is willing to contact this guy and see if he’s willing to sit down and talk with the student, which would be great… we’ve found that many scientists at that level are openly willing to offer their wisdom; I know H has done it for occasional students here and there and enjoys it.

But what it made me think about, was a comment I initially overlooked when the student made it today, that he was interested in master’s level programs because he wasn’t interested in academics/teaching. It totally went over my head this afternoon, which surprised me because most of the scientists H deals with every day at work (in industry) are Ph.D. level-scientists… people who got the Ph.D. and had no intention of teaching/academics. But I want to be sure he is aware that he need not shut himself out of possible Ph.D. work because he doesn’t want to teach. If he want to pursue a Ph.D., he would really need to get hooked up with a professor in his final year to do some research work, though. With his GPA and motivation, I think it’s very doable. And yes, he would need to pay attention to the subtle differences between programs designed to lead to academia and programs designed for industry.

And I admitted my bias for Ph.D. programs due to H’s success, but I just don’t want him to rule it out for the wrong reasons. And yes, regardless, he will need the GRE. I encouraged him to start a spread sheet as he researches each program so he can use that as reference when he starts talking with various people, whether it be at his own college or people in industry.