Quote:
Originally Posted by Blueberrybook
Well, H is very creative & inquisitive with a very scientific mindset as well as being quite artistic. He has plenty of ideas for things he would like to research but of course lacks time, funding, equipment, and materials. He has scientific interests in many areas, so that is not a problem for him.
Even I had to have a 1st author publication to graduate with an M.S. from the University of Houston (much less prestigious). I had to have a thesis too but nowhere near what Ph.Ds had to do. Ph.D. candidates in my department had to have 2, 3 1st author publications to graduate.
I went on the M.S. track too because I realized I hated lab research.
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Sorry to hear about your husband's situation. You basically need experience (first author) to get a job, and you need a job to get experience (also first author). So I can see why he's "stuck" in his current situation. I hate how things play out like that.
And yep, I know all about that PhD route, sadly. That's why I didn't like it. You also needed to maintain a 3.7 GPA at my school, a school which scaled grades downward. (e.g., If the class average was a B, they scaled your 85% down to a C, 75%.) No thanks. I ended up with a 3.69 with my master's, so I technically would've "failed" to graduate from a PhD program. But I was totally new to computer science. I had no idea what I was doing sometimes because I never took introductory computer science classes. So getting a 3.69 was HARD.
The only reason I went to this school is that I did my undergrad there. I got a free scholarship for my master's, as well as a $20,000 stipend from my research lab. (Yep, I still worked in the lab despite me studying CS. I helped them write software to do their research.) $20,000 wan't much, though, for Boston/Cambridge area.
Prestigious schools really aren't worth it sometimes. No one really gives a f*** where you graduated from -- MIT, Harvard, or John Doe's Random College. It gives you an edge up on your first job, but that's about it.
