To PhD or Not to PhD?

Top Reasons to do a PhD

You have an insatiable curiosity, especially for your potential field of study. You might also be intrigued by opportunities in academia, such as going to conferences or having international collaborations.  You want intense intellectual stimulation that will be challenging at times but will give you extensive opportunities for cognitive growth.

You love solving problems and looking at data. You’re the sort of person who might stay up late trying to solve a problem simply for the intellectual satisfaction.  You would be bored in a career that did not provide challenges.

You understand a PhD is a master class in how to solve problems that no one has solved. This gives you a skill set that is useful not just for careers in the ivory tower but beyond, including project management, creative problem solving, troubleshooting, communication, and self-motivation.

You are interested in the career options that a PhD can provide in academia – becoming a professor at a research-intensive university or teaching at a teaching intensive college or university – or outside academia – industry, government, professional programs, consultancy.

You like the sort of people who are in academia and the types of intellectual, analytic conversations your peers and mentors have.  You feel like these people are or could be “your tribe.”  Note that even though you may experience “imposter syndrome” and feel like you don’t belong, this is normal and you will gain more confidence.

You like the freedom that comes from being able to choose your research topic and determine how to execute it in your day-to-day decisions, especially as you become more senior.

Top Reasons NOT to do a PhD

Your motivation is external rather than internal.  Here are some examples:

·      You’re want a PhD because someone else (e.g., parents, spouse) thinks you should do it 
·      You want more letters after your name or want to be called “doctor”
·      You think there are financial incentives to doing a PhD

You don’t like to push yourself to do more than necessary.  You give up easily when you encounter roadblocks.

You frequently push yourself to such a high level of perfection that you struggle to complete tasks (and you are not willing/able to overcome this).

You do not have the resilience to endure the tribulations of academia and research (and you are not willing/able to gain this). Did I mention that research can be hard?!  Researchers can also be very critical.  It is typical for your mentors, advisory committee, examiners, and reviewers to provide more constructive criticism than positive feedback. If you are overly sensitive, defensive, or unwilling to use the constructive criticism to improve your work, a PhD may not be for you.  If you realize that this criticism comes from a place of wanting to optimize the quality of your research and help you grow as a researcher, and if you take the comments to heart to improve, then you’re on the right track.  Graduate school can induce or exacerbate mental health disorders – particularly anxiety and depression – so having good coping mechanisms and a strong support network including peers, a good advisor, and mentors is essential.

You haven’t seen a research project through from start to finish and aren’t fully aware of what research is really like.  Research is often much more challenging and time consuming than undergraduates realize. Roadblocks can occur, experiments may not work and may require a pivot. Ideally you should have done an honours thesis and Master’s thesis before you embark on a PhD so that you have a realistic sense of what research involves and that you are willing to commit to a PhD.  A PhD (in Neuroscience/Psychology in Canada) typically requires three published or publishable research projects plus a comprehensive general introduction and general discussion that provides the overarching context and brings the projects together.  Thus it is about 4X as much work as a Master’s over a shorter time (typically 4 years in Canada or even less, 3 years, for the PhD component of an MD-PhD).

You haven’t selected your advisor carefully.  The most important factor in PhD success can be your fit with your advisor. A good advisor runs a lab whose research excites you, does high-caliber research, is a great mentor as well as an advisor, and fosters a positive, fun lab environment.  Advisors also vary in their supervision style from micromanagers who look over your shoulder at every step to people who leave you to work things out by yourself for long periods of time. There’s no one-size-fits-all model for an advisor so you should ensure that your potential advisor’s style matches your needs and expectations. You should also make sure you and your advisor are on the same page about how much freedom you will have in selecting which projects to pursue. Check with potential advisors’ students to see whether they seem happy and successful.  Your potential advisor will check your references and should be perfectly happy for you to consult others about them. It’s also worth checking out how other students feel about potential programs (especially students with backgrounds similar to your own), but generally the choice of advisor is more important than the specific program.