Ph.D. Programs

PhD programs are often a necessity if you want a career in scientific research. Because of this, many students that I talk to ask about going straight into PhD programs. While this is possible, it is actually a lot rarer than many think. For instance in my PhD cohort of ~15 students, there was only 1 person who went straight from undergraduate to the PhD program. Most worked in an academic or industry lab for a couple of years first.

On top of that, I do not recommend students go straight from undergraduate to a PhD program.

A couple of reasons. First, I often find that students who want to go straight aren’t going into the Ph.D. with a purpose and instead view it as the default option. I want to be clear that this is not the case. Sometimes students are afraid of entering the “real world” and view the idea of staying a student as a safe path. While this may be true, it also is just delaying the inevitable and you should just rip the bandaid off and face the real world (it’s not as scary as it seems). Sometimes students feel that they are not prepared for the job they want and view a Ph.D. as the necessary training. This is also not true, you will gain better training working and gaining real world experience than in the classroom. Finally, in my experience, many of the Ph.D. students who went straight from undergrad really struggled as grad students. These students often get burnt out and end up hating their dissertation. Often times they leave research entirely when they are done. While there is nothing wrong with leaving research after your Ph.D., you can save yourself a lot of pain and suffering by just exploring the real world first.

All of that said, if you are convinced a Ph.D. is for you, or if you want to look at what the application process is like, continue to the applying for a PhD Section.

Finally, I will note my own bias here. I applied for phd programs as a senior undergraduate student and did not get into any of the programs I applied to. I then worked for 3 years before applying again and this time did get into multiple programs including some that rejected me the first time. When I look back on the first round of applications, I agree with the programs that rejected me, I was not ready and would not have done well. The second time I was ready and thrived.