<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>I’m currently studying towards a degree in Engineering, specialising in electrical.
It’s always been my goal to pursue a career in R&D in the field. </p>
<p>In Australia at least, universities offer a 2 year Masters in Research that qualifies graduates to work in R&D Positions in the private/government sector.
From my understanding, for students in Australia, unless they wish to pursue a job at Universities and academia, this 2 year masters is all that is required to work in R&D.
Students in this can do some coursework, but much of the program is focused on the specific research project they are working on with a professor. </p>
<p>I’ve just come from the states (I Did a study abroad program at UW - it was amazing! the US college experience is awesome), and I did a tour of some other campuses around the east, and had a look at graduate school programs.
I found that grad school in the US is quite different to back home, and after talking with a few advisers at the campuses, I was informed that in the US, a PhD would be the requirement to pursue a research related role.</p>
<p>Is this the case? </p>
<p>I wasn’t able to find any Masters programs (Still in the process of going through all the uni’s websites!) that were particularly for research, most seem to be directed towards completing additional coursework and a thesis project. </p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any advice you can give!</p>
<p>It depends on the kind of research you want to do, but generally speaking you can do some kinds of research with a master’s.</p>
<p>Much like in Australia, in the US in industry and government, there are certain research tasks you can do with a master’s. You can work as a lab technician, research associate, analyst, etc. Lab managers/research coordinators typically tend to be master’s degree holders. There are many government researchers/analysts with a master’s degree as their highest degree.</p>
<p>But if you want to advance in research - become a manager of a research team, plan your own studies, that kind of thing - then you need a PhD. And if you want to work in academia, you need a PhD.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply.
I’ve noticed that there are quite a few different types of masters too, is there a particular type? </p>
<p>For example, cornell offered a 1 year masters with a thesis, whereas princeton offered a 2 year masters without a thesis.</p>
<p>Also, each university seemed to offer both a masters in engineering (usually coursework and sometimes a thesis), as well as a masters in science (usually longer than the MEng, and comprised of coursework - I think they led towards a PhD). </p>
<p>Sorry if some of these questions seem obvious to you! I’m just not at all sure on the US system, and Australia is somewhere in between nowadays, with some unis in our old system, but some moving towards the US style!</p>
<p>Don’t get hung up on the “US system” because there really isn’t one. A masters degree over here can be one year or three, can be thesis or research paper or just coursework, and you cannot tell the difference by the name. At one school, the MS might be the 2-year research degree while the MEng is the 1-year coursework-only degree, and at another school the titles might be reversed.</p>
<p>Focus on content - if you want a research job (or PhD) then you want a research degree with some real meat to it. Employers and adcoms will look at what you did and where you did it, not the title on the degree. I would suggest a 2-year research degree with coursework and thesis as being your best choice, but as I mentioned before this could be a BS or BSE or BEng or something else entirely depending on which school is offering it.</p>
<p>Also, is your undergrad a 3-year or 4-year degree in Australia? In the US they expect a 4-year degree, and you may need to do an additional year before admission to a US grad program.</p>
<p>Engineering research requirements are not the same as science research requirements. It depends on what one considers research but academic research implies post doctoral while industrial research can be pretty much at any level.</p>
<p>Undergrad in Australia is normally 3 years, but engineers take 4 years of engineering courses, and finish with a thesis project in their final year. </p>
<p>The academic advisors in the uni’s i visited also mentioned that if I fell slightly short on coursework I could easily take another semester or so before the masters to complete any additional courses before starting the Masters. </p>
<p>Thanks for the advice guys, I guess I will just continue to consider each Uni and hope to find one with a Masters with some good research content in their structure.</p>