…and just like that, it’s Fall, which means many folks are confronting the inevitable dread of deciding what they want to do in the future. The title is a question that I hear a lot (both directly and indirectly), so I thought I would use this post to detail some of my thoughts on the pros and cons of each stage of education. As you have probably noticed, I pursued all four, and so I will mostly be relying on my own experiences rather than speculating about yours. Consequently, it would be in your best interest to get a few other perspectives about these importance life decisions!

Bachelor’s degree

I am of the opinion that, with the exception of rather unusual or personal circumstances, it is in one’s best interest to get a Bachelor’s degree at a college/university. Now, that might not be right out of high school, it might be through a transfer option, and there are of course several different kinds of undergraduate institutions, but the general consensus is that getting a Bachelor’s degree is an incredibly formative experience (beyond just academics!) that prepares one for future success. There will always be financial, family, and other opportunity costs associated with such a choice, but I hope you will strongly consider a Bachelor’s program.


Master’s degree

Upon completion of a Bachelor’s degree, however, the possibilities seem endless and daunting. If you really enjoyed the academic environment, and are particularly down to take more courses, then a Master’s degree could be a good fit for you.

Master’s degree programs generally fall into two kinds: course-based and thesis-based. In the former, all you have to do is take courses and once you have enough courses/credits, you’re able to graduate. In the latter, there will also be coursework, but one or more of those courses/credits will be research towards a thesis that you then have to write and get signed off by an advisor. Do some research into what opportunities exist in your field and which track sounds most appealing to you.

The pros: As it’s a higher level of education, having a Masters generally opens up more doors for you with an accompanying salary boost. You’ll get more time in school to “figure out what you really want to do in life,” and you get to spend that time with a really diverse group of people, as many Master’s students have significant work experience.

The cons: Generally speaking, you have to pay to get a Master’s degree and sometimes the price tag can be hefty. There are definitely financial aid, fellowships, company sponsors, research and teaching assistantships available, so do look into those if you’re concerned. Master’s degrees also often take 1-2 years to complete, so there’s definitely an opportunity cost associated with this. In certain (lucrative) lines of work such as software engineering or finance, getting a Master’s might not even be that much of a benefit career-wise.

Joint Bachelor’s/Master’s degrees 💡

One option that exists in an increasing number of schools/programs is the joint degree, where you can start a Master’s program at the same school that you do your Bachelor’s at. This is an opportunity that I strongly recommend you look into for several reasons:

  • Often times you’ll be able to transfer a few courses from your Bachelor’s degree or start the Master’s early, which means you can finish early / on time. For example, I completed my BS/MS degree in only 4 years and 1 quarter, as opposed to 5-6 years.
  • The application requirements for joint Master’s programs are generally the same as the regular Master’s programs, but I’d say the bar to entry is significantly lower. Schools appreciate your loyalty.
  • A lot of people choose to double major, which I think is totally fine if you have diverse interests, but in my opinion, a little redundant since you’ve already shown you can complete a Bachelor’s degree. For the same amount of coursework, you could finish most if not all of a Master’s degree, which is much more impressive (on paper)!
  • Research and teaching assistantships, though typically in short supply for Master’s students, can be easier to obtain if you’re in a joint program as you’ve already built up quite a few connections during your undergraduate career. This can make paying for a Master’s much less stressful. I was on my undergraduate financial aid at the start of my joint degree and finished the last two quarters TA-ing for a professor I met in undergrad.
  • Lastly, there are a lot of highly unexpected and non-trivial non-academic factors that make adjusting to life at a new school challenging if your Master’s degree takes you elsewhere. If you’re feeling happy about your undergraduate institution and want to finish the Master’s quickly, then this is something to consider.

One question I sometimes get is: “If I pick the joint degree option, this means I want to work in industry and not get a PhD, right? In other words, Enze, you’re weird.”

Well, OK, it’s true that for most people a Master’s degree is the terminal degree option, after which they want to start working or at the very least leave academia. But I don’t think there is anything precluding you from pursuing a PhD and certainly those programs won’t be looking at your resume and rejecting your application because you already have a Master’s. In fact, I would counter and say:

  • A Master’s degree is a Master’s degree and everyone would see that as a significant achievement. It would be especially appealing to PhD programs if your Master’s program had a thesis component.
  • As I mentioned before, getting a Master’s and staying in school not only allows you to gain knowledge and expand your network, but also time to figure out what you want to do. In fact it might just be that extra year where you make a research breakthrough or have a conversation that convinces you that the PhD is the right (or wrong) option.
  • Similar to a double major, a Master’s degree could be a great time for you to branch out and learn something new! I personally think it’s a waste to get a Master’s degree in the same program as your major, which is why I studied Computational Math for my Master’s. I enjoyed the subject and, practically speaking, it was a backup in case MSE didn’t work out. 🤷‍


PhD degree

The ultimate death senten-commitment. Hopefully you’ve already done your research—both into what a PhD program entails and in the field that you’re interested in—because the PhD is at least a 4-year commitment that asks you to develop an original body of research to advance knowledge in your field. Here I won’t be able to cover everything that goes into this decision, so I’ll just list some main points below.

The pros: It’s a long time, but an incredibly freeing/independent time where you can devote your time to thinking deeply about a topic that is (hopefully) important to you. There will also be a few more courses which typically goes towards a Master’s degree in the same field, so most PhD programs actually include a Master’s component that you automatically obtain (maybe with some minor paperwork). This in particular is a reason why some people think it doesn’t make sense to get a dedicated Master’s before the PhD. Oh, and did I mention that you get paid to learn? Obviously you won’t get super rich by any means, but it’s pretty cool how you can be financially supported to just think and learn (and sometimes do a lil’ research). Once you’re done (and you will finish!), you’ll find even more opportunities open to you with an accompanied salary bump and likely faster promotional tracks. But please don’t choose a PhD for the money because that’s not worth it. Do it because you’re curious about the world.

The cons: The length of time is certainly no fun and it’s also accompanied by a lot of failure, stress, imposter syndrome, and isolation that could really hamper your progress. Your advisor relationship in particular can have a large impact on your personal development, and even the nicest advisers can sometimes get on your nerves. 😒 All of this can appear even worse if you talk to others who are working (and earning money, buying cars/houses, etc.) and it makes you wonder if it’s worth it. The opportunity cost is even more hefty than the one for a Master’s. So think carefully.


Work

I already addressed work in a few places up above, but I felt like it still deserved its own section. I worked for a little bit between my Master’s and PhD degrees, mostly to pay the exorbitant Palo Alto rent, but I did end up learning a thing or two.

The pros: First and foremost, it is really nice to have a steady salary that gives you more spending freedom. Also, weekends and holidays are true breaks, without any homework or exams or projects to think about. The end of the work day is the end of the work day. I also found the pace of industry to be quite fast, but that’s probably because I worked at a startup. Compared to PhD research anyways (and even some class projects), industry projects seemed to wrap up very quickly or at least set very frequent and concrete milestones to achieve. This means you get rapid feedback and boosted productivity with immediate results.

The cons: Ultimately, I couldn’t stay in industry and didn’t enjoy it that much because it wasn’t aligned with my future career goals in teaching, but this was a really great experience that is by no means “inferior” or “worse” than staying in school. I also felt like, while Citrine had a very diverse and educated team that greatly respects individuals, there was (understandably) the need to align ourselves with the company’s focus and goals during working hours. And so it was less flexible than a school environment where I can randomly engage folks of all majors about tangential subjects like education, math, psychology, etc. and pursue learning for learning’s sake (as opposed to turning a profit).

Professional degrees

There are several professional degrees out there that I did not cover here—MD (for medicine), MBA (for business), JD (for law), Masters (for teaching)—because I do not feel like I have enough experience to comment extensively on any of them. I just want to note that they exist and could be very good options for you.

If you have any further questions about any of this information, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Update 2023/12/23: I realized upon revisiting this document three years later (holy 🐮…) that I offered some of my thoughts about the pros and cons of each approach, but I didn’t explain how I personally evaluated the options that were presented to me. And perhaps that’s what’s most useful to some readers, because the general pros and cons can be found anywhere, but the personal thought process is often missing. What follows is a transparent thought process that is meant to illuminate so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

I did high school in St. Louis, MO (Go 🐏!) and didn’t know what Stanford University was until my senior year. I applied early action and got in 🙏🏼, so I became a “FoShoFro” (do they still say this??) in late-April 2014 after attending Admit Weekend—it simply seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. I came in knowing I wanted to study MSE ❤️ and did “the usual” undergrad stuff, but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after. For awhile, I wanted to teach STEM at the secondary level and thought of applying for the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) to get an MA in Education and a CA teaching credential. But after the summer of sophomore year, when I did the MSE Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), I thought research was kinda cool (so, maybe PhD for me?) and I discovered it was possible to be a teaching-track faculty in higher education. But I had a late start and not enough research experience, so as a cautious person who likes to sample many different experiences, I wasn’t about to commit (to anything) just yet.

It was around this point (mid-junior year) that the co-terminal Masters option appealed to me primarily as a way to delay having to make a decision. I heard that as a coterm, my chance of being admitted to a Masters program was higher than an external applicant and having this advanced degree could be helpful later, so it seemed like a good bet. Oh also, I could only attend Stanford because of its general financial aid policy, and I figured I would be able to secure teaching/research assistantships to help pay my way through. Since I loved math and found the MSE curriculum lacking, I got excited about the possibility to coterm in ICME, which seemed like all the fun (and 🤑) of CS without the insane number of students. I did very well in my CME and CS courses, or at least sufficiently well to apply in the Winter quarter of my junior year and get into the ICME coterm. I actually finished the undergraduate MSE curriculum in three years, so I was able to spend my entire senior year taking my coterm coursework, while being on my undergraduate financial aid, living in Roble with my undergrad friends, etc. 🙏🏼

As senior year approached the end, I was pretty sure that a PhD + teaching faculty track was my calling. But I knew I needed at least an extra quarter to finish the coterm, which would also give me an extra summer (after senior year) for another internship (which I did at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM). I needed to submit applications in the Fall anyways, so the question at this point was how long should I plan to stay in the coterm for? The full fifth year or just Fall quarter to finish? Somehow, I decided that since I was going into a PhD program anyways, I should try working in industry a little bit prior to that to convince myself that academia is the right path. 🤨 So I ended up finishing the coterm in Fall quarter and worked at Citrine Informatics for the first seven months of 2019 as an Instructional Designer (ID). I am grateful for all of these opportunities and the way they happened to come together, and the ID role in particular prepared me for future projects in ways I didn’t even realize.

In retrospect, however, I did have a few thoughts on my approach to the coterminal Masters. In one sense, I am glad I finished ASAP because that last quarter felt pretty isolating (many of my friends graduated from Stanford) and Masters students everywhere are typically “caught in the middle” between undergrads and PhD students. Working in industry felt nice with a consistent schedule and higher pay (rent is not cheap!), but indeed very quickly I realized that the academic environment still felt more natural to me. At the same time, I also wish I took things slower and took the time to be present with the people who were still around and to enrich myself in the courses at Stanford (biggest regret: not taking MATSCI 181 thermo with Alberto!). I guess the duck syndrome and imposter syndrome are hard to shake off. 😔 Anyways, I don’t dwell much on the road not taken, and I hope this addendum gives you a little more insight into how a person might go about these decisions. Also note that my views are clouded by survivorship bias, in that my PhD and teaching goals ended up working out as I had hoped, but that leg of my educational journey is another story…