Second chance at Ivy (graduate School)

juillet
Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:28:44 +0000

People sometimes do not stay in their field after getting a PhD, but that’s typically because they either don’t find a job in their field or find better prospects outside the field after they’ve already made the decision to get one. It’s generally not a good idea to decide to get a PhD with an eye towards leaving to get an industry job that you don’t need a PhD for. That’s a waste of time.

For example, if you want to do finance, you could easily do finance with a BA and then possibly go back for an MS or MBA. You certainly don’t need a PhD to do finance, and you won’t get paid more for having one. That’s fine if you thought you wanted to be a math professor and then realized you hated math research when you were near finishing your PhD, so you go to do finance instead. But if you already know a priori that you want to do finance, why get the PhD? It’d be so much more useful to get the work experience or the degree that leads directly to the job.