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Life is a compromise but .......
Let's start with money, have you noticed many successful and innovative business people didn't have much schooling (think Apple, Microsoft,.....ok Oracle is an exception so are founders of various hi-tech companies :-) ? Many started their business or career very early and didn't have time to go to school. They essentially knew what they wanted and just kept going but we are late bloomers or at least we hope :-) Sure you want to go back to school ? If so...read on...
I have many degrees and various quite different careers, including university teaching (yes the professor bit), full-time researcher (mad scientist), Wall Street (greed was good), IT (as everyone else), and my current job as an actuary (could have done medical school but I don't think I could stand the intern hours). I have done above average in each of them (but I'm modest :-) . My problem is that I find many things interesting so I tried many different things :-) but that's just me.
Pursuing a PhD is hard work, it can be very fun but you have to really like the subject. You are young so you can always make up for any lack of background. Remember, doing a PhD *IS* a major commitment on your part, it takes years out of your life not to mention lost opportunities and wages.
If you don't know what you want to study then it is a bit tough to decide. You need to sit down and think hard about what you like and what the future may hold. This is the tough part as it is hard to predict the future, recall the IT boom and bust all in a very short time. Deciding on what subject to study is a decision you need to spend serious time on. We can't decide that for you but this is where the compromise comes in, you want something that you like to do but at the same time able to survive financially. Think of fields that are hard to outsource or move offshore, bioinformatics is an excellent field but I would stay more on the biology side than the computer side.
If a school accepts you to do a PhD in a technical field, chances are that you would get some financial support, if your grades and other supporting materials are good, then you may get some form of fellowship or teaching assistantship the first year. Times are hard on schools these days as many are going back to school, but you need some financial aid other than loans.
An outstanding PhD candidate can get tuition waiver and up to $20+K a year of stipend so you can indeed survive on graduate assistantship alone. If you have done well in your first year or so by passing your qualifying exams or "prelim" for your PhD, and you get to work with someone with a research grant, then you probably would be offered a research assistantship in working toward your thesis. Remember all these assistantships have strings attached; for a teaching assistantship, you are supposed to teach halftime and you can take only half a study load, same for a research assistantship. So you need to figure that in in calculating the amount of time needed to finish your course requirements. The only except would be a no-string attached fellowship where you just study fulltime.
Remember, when you apply to a PhD program, you are competing with highly qualified applicants world wide, and believe me you are facing very tough competition for financial assistance. However, if you are a US citizen, there are financial resources available from government agencies, put your internet search skills to good use or visit the career office in your old college.
After you have narrowed down you field, do a search on the universities offering such graduate programs and email some of the professors directly (not the admission office) and ask for information ...etc.. If some replies and you are interested, ask for contact information from their graduate students, they can give you better information about the professors and the graduate program.
If you are still in contact with any of your former professors, email them and solicit their advice as well. You probably need them to write some of your recommendations. If you need a recommendation from Saabnet, I think Scott or many here would be happy to give you more than a couple :-).
Best of luck and let us know....
posted by 12.42.232...
, Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:29:00
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