Why get a masters degree?

If you ask me, you should either:
a) Get a job, and have the company pay for the masters degree if you really want it, or
b) Get a Ph.D., and have the school pay for the degree.

In general, I agree that post-bachelor's schooling is risky, (bachelor's on the other hand, is not) but for some professions (Professors, Professional Researchers, Professional Scientists, etc), advanced degrees are strictly required.

For some professions, the investment will pay off (Engineering, CS, M.D., etc), for others, it certainly will not (English, History, etc).

EDIT: Lastly, if you're committed to a MS program, I'd see if you can get supported by a faculty member there doing research. Professors usually don't like to accept master's students as RAs because the're usually there for 2 years and then out, and aren't able to contribute much to the field, so that will make it harder if it is even possible.

Remember, you're losing out on (I don't know) 50-80k year if you were to take a job with a BS (at least thats how it was in Boston) PLUS paying for 2 years of tuition PLUS living expenses -- it'd be nice if you could get your tuition waived and get a stipend to help with living expenses to do what you are basically already doing (research).

I'm getting a masters because
1. I don't want to spend 4-6 years out of work.
2. From a hiring prespective, there is little difference between a MS and phd.
3. My bachelors degree is not sufficient to get me hired into the jobs I want, even with exp.
4. I hate my current job.

I've been to both campuses before, and both are nice. I'm not too worried about finances because I'm expecting this degree to push me into an 80k+ job. Even if everything falls apart, I've made a good impression on some upper management people at a large company so worst case I'll be working a job I don't really like for 60k to 70k.

I vote MI as I am a fan of Mother North, F*CK the West coast lol.

I was most recently a Distinguished Engineer at IBM...joined as an STSM and was promoted after two years. STSM is the highest non-executive band and DE is the lowest executive level position. I turned down the VP role which was offered when I tendered my resignation last August.

I started my career working for NCR back in 1983 basically straight out of high school doing QA on micro-fiche duplicators. After a year of that I was writing firmware for the collation system. Spent the next 5 years in a variety of jobs before landing in the startup scene. Did that for 7 years and joined a Venture Capital firm in the Silicon Valley to run technical diligence for investments. After 5 years of that I went back into startup land and ran through 2 more acquisitions before landing at IBM for 5 years. Now I am in the startup scene again, and I did all of this without getting a degree.

The idea that corporations will not hire without a college degree is a not true. No college just means you have to take a grunt job to start but real work experience is the driver for career success in most fields, not a college degree. I have not listed an education category on my resume for as long as I can remember and its been at least 20 years since I was asked what school I went to in an interview.

All that being said I will reiterate that for hard sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Psychology, etc.) and medical fields a degree is mandatory. For just about any other field you would be better off just going to work. I am not even suggesting that you don't learn anything in college, but the fact is that it's probably not going to get you ahead in the long run. In most cases it is more about who you are, how motivated you are, and how driven you are to succeed then what piece of paper you have hanging on the wall.

Even though I live in California, I pick Michigan. I hate California and love Michigan, but don't know much about either of the schools

Shredder, 1983. Jobs now requiere a college degree that didnt in 2000. (even though your doing the same thing.) Exp. is the best way to get a job, but society now demands that we have a "useless peice of paper" to even be taken seriously by someone in a position to hire. Two real options; 1) get a degree to even get your foot in the door, or 2) Bust your body and ass to make adequate money and hope to get promoted from within. (More likely some snot nose shit with an expensive degree is gonna get that position though.)

Yeah it's a lot harder to get a job based solely on experience unless that experience stretches back a while or you are keeping up to date on certifications and whatnot. The jobs that my father has held require a degree unless you have at least 5 years prior experience doing the same thing and you can't get the experience nowadays without a degree to get your foot in the door.

It really is no different today. I was told all the same things back when I graduated from high school. My parents tried everything to keep me from dropping out of college because they were convinced I would end up digging ditches for a living. Even my high school counselor called me when he found out I had dropped out of college to try and talk me into going back.

I guarantee you that 20 years from now the statistics for self-made millionaires will still reflect that the vast majority of them have no college degree. College does not teach drive, ambition, motivation, or how to succeed in the workplace. 80-90% of what you learn there will be forgotten within 5 years. If you are going to school to get a degree in English, History, Business or some other Liberal Arts field you are wasting your time unless you want to be a teacher.

Some smaller-minded corporations simply won't hire you for a salaried/management track job without at least a bachelor's. It's that simple.

I pretty fully agree with Shredder. However in Jet's desired field, biomed, master's or PhD is a minimum. It's just requisite in that area.

If he wanted to be a lab tech or sales, that would be another thing. But if he wants to be the BioMed Engineer he needs the master's/PhD. Shit, in some of the more prestigious/competitive labs you need a master's to be a lab tech.

I'm not sure where you get this, but from my experience, if there is little difference between two degrees, it is between a MS and a BS -- a PhD is in its own league.*

I think you need to check on this.

*At least in EE, CS, the two fields I work in.

It's the same across all engineering fields.

BS: General learning about how to learn, general equations - neglecting things to make them simpler.
MS: Specialized learning, learning how to do things within your specific field more in depth, equations look more like they do in nature.
PhD: Bat shit psycho. You're doing full on CFD/Solidworks/Research. You know your shit and could teach other people to know your shit.

When I was looking for entry level and low experience jobs in my field, a large number of the required a MS. However, I didn't see any jobs require a PHD, at least nothing under 5 years of exp. A phd might be necessary in the future, but it isn't required for getting my foot in the door. Also, a company might pay me to get a phd, but I need to get the masters to get hired first. I agree in the cs and ee fields, but since biomedical engineering is a newer field, there aren't many BS degrees for it. A lot of the schools I've spoken with have said that biomedical engineering cannot be taught well at the BS level. Of course, this was in 2004, but the end result is my BS degree will not get me hired in the right jobs.

your mom goes to college

Work on the Masters, but aim at kicking the shit out of it to push for notice for a supported PHD position. (just saying), and you have to go for Berkeley, not that I know if it's better but it's Berkeley, it's on the correct side of the country, and the midwest blows goats. and Michigan is too close to that.

http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/s ... chools.jsp.?

California is more expensive but Michigan is cheaper on room and board. I'm pretty sure that Michigan would just be cheaper in general too, it's expensive as hell in Cali. But that's just the money part. It seems like they allow lower scores in Michigan, so the bar is set a bit lower which may allow you to get better grades than your peers...if that even makes sense.

One of the only reasons I wouldn't do Berkely mate, besides the insane costs. At least up here, Berk's infamous for being known to have ze faggots.
Prestige < Your application of ze teachings.
Either way, you need that degree for this kind of eng.

Edit: My sister's fiance got a job as a chem-E with a BS in EE, and is now having his "learn'n" being paid for him.
I'm not saying put stocks in a job paying for you, but there sure is hell a chance.

Reason for choosing cal, berkley - Ocean

So much hate for Michigan :(

I know I don't live there anymore, but I have a soft spot for the place (that, and I did indeed graduate from U of M).

As far as the experience vs. degree debate, yes, you do have a lot of people getting degrees and getting no jobs right now. I transferred to Michigan to save me 2-3 years of tuition/board and still got out with 50k in debt. If you go to college nowadays, you really have to have a plan with what you want to do with it and what you want it to do for you, otherwise chances are, at least right now, pickings are a bit slim when you graduate (especially because the market is loaded with people with degrees and no experience). I've got a good job now, but I won't lie, I packed up, moved, and worked fast food for a year before I snagged a decent job.

Then again, the job market right now is pretty rough for just about anyone.

http://uat.edu/


this be my school. army is paying for it...for the moment (with the entire govt shutdown, i dont even know if im going to remain in the service past friday)

its bad ass and its a collage for geeks pure and true, complete geek culture there. the classes are also tailored around what field you want to study.

for example:

i need english writing credit towards game design. instead of reading random books and writting essays, we learn how to properly read/write/publish game manuels, strategy guides, advertisements and all that shit.

Social Sciences in a game design field are how to properly conduct product assessment surveys, how to moraly scale a game to a culture and how to gague a reaction from a game with its impact in a society.


its a cool place...tad bit expensive but not bank breaking. if i could, i would go full time and live out there on my GI bill, but i dont think the wife is thrilled with that.

I'd say it's mainly dependent on which college you go to that makes up if it's really going to be worth it or not. Many of the kids I went to school with from high school in the best school district in my area turned into complete idiots. They did just enough to get a college degree from Northwestern, ISU, etc and are either still temps years later or changing careers. Only the ones that actually came to learn instead of just going through the motions made it through with more than they came into it with. I personally dropped out of college due to terrible teachers. I venture to guess it was due to the fact I went to a Community College to save some cash; turns out half the teachers there feel like they have something to prove. Then again, as a web designer/artist/coder, a nice portfolio and some certifications would get me damn near any job.

On Jet's actual topic, I'd definitely take hookers advice and look up housing. Berkeley may have cheaper tuition but if you are looking for a place off campus shit is real expensive in SoCal.