My last post was originally about twice the length of the final product. I took a huge detour into things that I think everyone should consider when deciding to go to grad school. I decided it was big enough for its own post, so here we go.

I’ve met a lot of people since starting at MIT. Rich, poor, old(er), young(er), American, foreign, male, female, tall, short, blonde, brunette, left-handed, etc. Some are happy, some are not. My experience is that the folks who are happy are the ones who really thought about coming to grad school.

If you’re thinking about applying to MIT, my guess is that you have an undergrad degree in some sort of science or engineering and that you did well. You’re smart, you can accomplish things, and your resume indicates as such. You know what this means? You’re marketable! You can go out and get a well-paying job. Consider that. No no, really consider that.

With an accomplished undergrad engineering degree, you can have a job that will pay the bills, allow you to live in an apartment without roommates, own a car, and take a nice trip once a year. You want to try that $12 beer on the menu at the pub? Go for it. (This isn’t to say you should be thoughtless with your money. Please note that I didn’t tell you to try the $50 beer on the menu.) You won’t have to turn in any more problem sets or jump through hoops that we call “quals.”

My experience is that the folks who are unhappy in grad school are the ones who didn’t think about the above scenario. They came to grad school because they thought it was expected of them. This is a terrible idea. Just because your parents, spouse, boss, friends, or dog think that you should go to grad school doesn’t mean that you have to go to grad school. It’s a suggestion worth considering, especially if the person who made it knows you well, but the decision is yours.

With that, here’s Nicole’s list of other reasons why you shouldn’t go to grad school.

1) It’s the next logical step after undergrad.
2) You feel you owe it to your professors who’ve spent time mentoring you.
3) The economy is tanking and you think you can’t get a job (if you think you can get into the PhD program at MIT, someone out there will hire you).
4) Everyone else in your family has a PhD.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from coming to graduate school. On the contrary, I want you to come to grad school and be happy about it. So just give it some thought. To be happy with your decision, you have to understand what you’re giving up and be content with that. (And please understand that you’re gaining a lot too. Perhaps that’s another post.) Make sure the PhD is what you want because you’re the one who has to do it.

I came to grad school kicking and screaming. Who, you may ask, was forcing me to get this degree against my will? I was. Let me back up.

I started my undergrad thinking, “Great! Four more years of classes and then I’M DONE.” While I’m now a professional student, I’ll let you in on my little secret: I hate class and I hate problem sets. The idea of signing myself up for 5 - 6 more years of problem sets after my undergraduate degree was just awful. Why would I do that? I was going to have an engineering degree. An engineering degree is useful!

But a funny thing happened on my way to a job: I discovered that I liked research. I had a job during the summer after my junior year and I thought it was awesome. I was at HP Labs, characterizing a flexible dielectric material. What fun! But I paused and looked at the others in my group. They all had PhDs. That was a problem.

Slowly, over the course of the summer, I resigned myself to having to apply to graduate school. I started looking into taking the GREs. I thought about who could write me a recommendation letter. I thought I would be the most unsuccessful grad school applicant ever because I hadn’t been planning on it for years. I hadn’t sought out famous professors for the sake of recommendation letters. I hadn’t found the hot new field that would propel me into an assistant professorship by the time I hit 30. I sought relationships with professors whom I liked. I studied that which I found interesting.

Returning back to school in the fall, I hit the ground running and applied to schools. I applied to MIT only because I thought I couldn’t be a serious electrical engineer without applying to MIT. I didn’t think I’d get in.  And it’s not like my heart was set on it because I was still really unsure that I even wanted a PhD. Again, more classes and problem sets? Really?

So I applied to jobs. Consulting jobs, engineering jobs. I got offers. Consulting offers, engineering offers. I sat down to weigh my options and realized that I was applying to the best jobs I could, but they would all bore me in three months. This was key. They were all great jobs - paid well, good locations, what have you. And they would have made fine summer internships. But I saw myself getting frustrated in them at the end of the summer.

I bit the cliched, proverbial bullet and came to MIT, still thinking, “If I hate it, I can leave after my master’s. Ugh, classes. Problem sets.” Three plus years later, post-master’s degree, I’m still here. Quite simply, it’s still fun. And of course, life plays tricks on us. Every now and then, I get the urge to take a class.