Masters vs PHD

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Now that I've finally graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree, I'm having trouble deciding whether to enter a master's program or a PHD program. I mean, what can people do with a master's degree? What can people do with a PHD?

(I'm excepting answers only from those that are currently in or have completed master's and PHD programs!)

It might help to tell us what you're majoring in, first.

It's unusual in the US for someone to be accepted into a phD program without first completing a Masters program. I have one professor who earned a doctorate without a MA, but that's only because he went to Cambridge, and the system is different in the UK. Unless you've found a particular program that interests you and which skips the Masters or offers a dual program, you'll very likely need to get the MA or MS first.

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this is not true at all for sciences (physics, engineering etc). actually one can not get a stipend if getting only MS.
people with phd do research or get to teach. problem is it is difficult to find jobs since phds are very specialized in certain topics and number of positions is smaller than for regular bs degree. check out phdcomic .

I stand corrected. I looked it up and apparently the requirements have changed over the years.

--- from the Wikipedia article on Doctorate.

It seems odd to me, since most BA and BS programs that I've seen don't actually teach research methods, but whatever works, I guess. I'll admit my experience is purely in Liberal Arts, though, so I have no idea what happens in the hard sciences. My own focus is in Archaeology and Iconography.

I just graduated from college with a BS in Biology on friday.

Congratulations on receiving your BS in Biology!

This. But there are other job options for PhD's other than research (e.g. traditional postdoc position) and teaching, which are the historically-typical jobs. A few recent graduates from my program have gone into Public Policy or consulting. With my PhD dissertation in Genetics about a week away from final submission, I myself have recently been looking for non-research jobs in teaching or in industry, but as AnotherOne pointed out, jobs geared for PhD's tend to be highly specialized and relatively few and far between. The economy being as bad as it is, it's only tougher now to get into the job market. The website for "The Chronicle of Higher Education" has a lot of useful info about what to do with a PhD, along with some interesting stuff about academia vs. other non-traditional positions. Do you know what you might want to do career-wise?

If you're not sure, there's no harm in taking time off from school to work. That's what I did after I finished my undergrad, I took 4 years off and worked in R&D at a local biotech company. Eventually I reached a glass ceiling of sorts at the company, and I saw that the only way to break through it was to get that piece of paper with "PhD" written on it. Not only did I find a natural, compelling reason (at least to me) to go to grad school, but also the experience boosted my resume/application and made it easier for me to get into the schools I applied to. It's just that a PhD takes a long long time, and it's more than likely you'll come out of the experience way different from the person you are when you enter it. I mean that in the most neutral way possible, heh. The bottom line is to take each step you take from now on as a learning experience. It doesn't really matter if you work, if you get just a Master's, or go all the way... there's something to learn, about the world and about yourself and your limits no matter what you do. When things are considered in that light, you can't really go wrong.

First of all OP, well done for graduating.

I'm not sure how it works in the United States but here in England, having a Masters would enable you to having the option of running an undergraduate university program. The law here is that you have to be qualified at least 1 level above whatever it is you are teaching. It basically runs like this.

To teach on a Masters you would need a Phd

To teach on an Honours Degree you would need a Masters

To teach on a Higher National Diploma you would need an Honours Degree.

There are exceptions to the rule of course, one of my lecturers from this year and next year has no college or university qualifications at all but has been in the media industry since he was 16 and now has over 30 years of experience.

Post-Grad courses are only really beneficial if you wish to become a lecturer or a researcher, if neither of those appeal to you then it's best to just take your degree and try get into the career you want.

A Master's in biology doesn't do much for you. It would be better and probably cheaper to go ahead and get the PhD.

My colleague has done a PhD Autism and it cost her a fortune! I was embarking on a Masters but could only afford a year at university so had to opt out with a PG Cert Autism. I hope to go back to do a MA soon as I can afford it. However when I applied to uni here in the UK, I could have gone straight into a PhD if I had wanted to. I am a SRN and got in on that.


www.jelibean.com

In my program (Anatomical Sciences & Neurobiology), you apply either to the PhD or the Masters. So there are 11 of us total in my current year, but 5 are Masters and 6 are PhD. We are all technically in the Masters portion of the program; however, you had to declare your intention upon application. Plus, the 2-year timeline and academics are somewhat different between the two groups. Both groups will do a Masters Defense at the end of year two, but for the Masters this is in order to graduate (most of them I believe will be applying and going into medical school) and for the PhD's, it determines our official acceptance into the doctoral program.

Another big difference is that the PhD's are federally funded and therefore receive a monthly stipend on which to live and our first two years of tuition are paid for us (after these two years, our mentors must pay for our stipends). The Masters do not receive any monetary support and don't receive tuition remission (although I would imagine they've got financial aid).

If you're interested in research or teaching, a PhD is the way to go. With a Masters in a related science, you would probably be looking at some sort of lab position.