I’m a junior college student planning on studying computer science. One day I plan on getting a PhD cause I want to work as a quant. What I was wondering though is it a good idea to jump into a PhD program after I finish my bachelors or do a masters to make myself a more stronger candidate for a PhD program?
i myself plan to get a Phd as well, i will get my masters then go for it, PhD programs are harder from what i’ve heard and i want to get it from a very good school.
It’s partially dependent on the field (eg public health requires an MPH before PhD for many PhD programs). I think in general you’re fine as long as you have an undergrad thesis.
You could talk to the professors in the area that you want to get a PhD in to hear their opinions. In some fields, people go directly into a funded PhD program rather than doing a masters first.
Reason why I’m asking cause even tho I my grades aren’t slipping or anything I still want to improve my grades. Also I know this sounds random, but is it worth doing a double major combing both CS and Mechanical Engineering?
Once you get to your four year college, talk to professors in the CS department.
I’ve been doing some research into applying for PhD in public health and the programs tend to vary in their responses. Some say admission is “highly unlikely” without PhD while others say “not required.” Is it not realistic to get into a PhD without a Master’s in public health? (My undergrad records, work experience, and test scores are competitive so I thought I might apply directly to PhD programs)
The advisability of a terminal masters program vs a PhD program is highly dependent on the specific field of study and on the career plans of the student; Consider what the terminal degree is in the field; Consider whether you want an academic career or not. But the OP should wait until his/her college career is well underway before considering this issue .
For CS, a masters is not generally required for PhD admissions, although it can be helpful for those whose undergraduate resumes show a weak GPA or little research experience. An undergraduate thesis is not required, just research experience - the more and the higher quality, the better!
I would recommend that when you get to the grad applications stage that you apply to both MS and PhD programs, the former as a back-up plan for the latter. If you get in to a PhD program, great! If you don’t, but get into an MS program, finish that then buck for the PhD later. If you don’t get into any, adjust your strategy and reapply next year and/or consider professional employment for a while.
Also, if you want to be a quant, note that in finance the name of the school matters a lot more than it does in most industries. It may not be enough to get a PhD, you may need a PhD from a short list of select schools!
@DonAlexander, an ME/CS double major is not generally going to be worthwhile. There are some fields that combine the two areas (like CFM) but you will generally see better results by taking one degree and adding relevant coursework from the other field. Completing two majors generally uses up resources (time, money, sanity) that could be better used elsewhere to make you a better professional or academic candidate, even for fields that combine college majors.
@JKA3720 I’m fairly certain that @julliet got her PhD in public health without an MPH.
It’s certainly not unheard of but for practical reasons, it’s unlikely. public health programs want you to have real world experience before getting higher degrees.
For CS, one usually applies to PhD programs after a bachelor’s degree, although it can be done after a master’s degree.
There are a couple kinds of master’s in CS. One is basically coursework to move you up to a higher salary in the work place, the other is a research degree as a step towards a PhD. If you apply as a master’s student, make sure it’s a research master’s and a not a professional one.
If you are accepted directly into a PhD program, you are more likely to get a research or teaching assistantship (i.e. money).
I did! I started my PhD in public health directly after finishing my bachelor’s in psychology.
PhD programs in public health vary a lot in their requirements, especially from subfield to subfield. For example, in epidemiology it’s much more common - nearly universal - for PhD programs to require an MPH or an equivalent master’s degree before pursuing the PhD; in the social and behavioral sciences in public health, there’s more of a mix. Unfortunately, the only remedy that I know of to this is to check the websites of individual programs to see which ones don’t require it. In fact, this requirement/recommendation was one of the reasons I only applied to one PhD program in college; most of the other PhDs I would’ve done required or recommended having an MPH. I simultaneously applied to four top MPH programs and planned that in case I didn’t get into the PhD program, I would get an MPH first and do the PhD after.
And yeah, romani is right. Because public health is a professional/applied field, most programs want to see that you have some experience in the field first. It’s the same in other areas like social work and education.
You don’t need an MS to get a PhD in most of the fields that quants typically get PhDs (CS, math, physics, engineering). If you have a competitive record - high grades, good research experience, excellent letters of recommendation - you can go directly into a PhD program. Whether or not it’s a good idea is debatable and depends a lot on you, but I’d say that if you know you want to be a quant it probably makes sense - it’s hard to get a job as a quant without a PhD.
Although you are pretty far down the line, I would like to recommend two things if you know from the outset that you want a non-academic career as a quantitative analyst. One is to echo what cosmicfish said. Top quant jobs are definitely prestige-focused, so when you pick your university you want to pick not just on the strength of a department or advisor (like you would if you were going the traditional academic route) but also on the strength of overall university prestige, relative to getting jobs in the quant field. A university like Penn or Harvard or Yale is going to have a stronger role in getting you into those quant jobs than Wisconsin or Ohio State. (Also, not gonna lie, Ivy League/elite university career services departments are monster. I went to Columbia and their career services office is amazing, especially for PhDs who want non-academic careers.)
Two, you want to choose your department carefully. If you can, choose a department where lots of people go to non-academic careers after graduating. When you visit, ask (in guarded terms) the graduate students what their post-graduation plans are, and see what you hear. It’s difficult to openly broadcast your desire to go non-academic because, unfortunately, in certain fields many if not most professors and departments won’t want to take you on if you don’t have academic aspirations. (In other fields, like engineering and CS, this might be less of an issue.)
But at the same time, you don’t want to join a department for which non-academic employment is a dirty word, and you feel like you have to slink around surreptitiously to do what you want. For example, at some point you’re going to need to do a non-academic internship over a summer; you want to go to a department where that would at least be viewed neutrally and not as anathema. I took the bold move of openly declaring my intent in my personal statement, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that (and even then, that’s because my field - public health - has lots of non-academic research positions that are considered acceptable dreams for PhD students. In a field like, say, English literature or pure math I don’t think I would’ve made the same move.)
My son started a PhD program in computer science right after his bachelor’s degree. Things did not go well, and after a while, he and his advisors agreed that it did not make sense for him to continue. He switched to a master’s program, which had very different requirements and could be completed in a much shorter time. After he completed it, he got a job as a software engineer.
At the university he was attending at least, the master’s degree and PhD in computer science were not a sequence. They were separate options that led into different types of work.
In many fields, PhD is typically a 4-6 year long research based program. A master’s program can be course based where you earn enough credits and finish a thesis (which often times is counted as a course) to graduate. It is not necessarily a prerequisite for admission to a PhD program. Some universities have two master’s programs, one is course based and the other research based. The latter is typically for students whose ultimate target is PhD but are deemed not ready for the direct PhD program. If you are sure you want to pursue a PhD, I don’t see why you shouldn’t at least try to get in the direct PhD program. PhD students are much more likely to be funded through teaching/research assistantships.
More typical is a pursuing a master’s in a different field. Lot’s of Ph.D’s and M.D.'s do an MBA as well. Generally a master’s is a redundant in the same field.
I have two friends who are professors at the school my D is (CS PhD program).
They both told me that in admission, it made very little difference whether the PhD applicant had a BS or an MS.
Not all, but many people, pick up an MS on the way to PhD, because “it’s convenient, may as well” and just in case they can’t make it to PhD for whatever reason.
I went to my PhD program with only a bachelor’s, no master’s. If a PhD is your goal it makes sense to me to take the most direct route. Picking up a master’s along the way is kind of like picking up and associate’s degree on your way to a bachelor’s. Why bother if it’s not your goal?
Plus, in my field, (biotech, biochem, molecular biology, etc), a masters is often viewed as sort of consolation prize given to PhD candidates who flunked their oral qualifying exams or otherwise couldn’t cut it in their PhD program.