Issue #40: The value of a Ph.D

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A while back, I made a video on the idea that helped win the “Nobel Prize in Statistics”, check it out will ya?

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A video on everything I’ve learned in my two biostatistics degrees

In this issue…

I just wanted to reflect a little bit on the past three weeks and share some thoughts I had in the interim. Since the last issue, I:

• got my Ph.D

• finalized a lease for a cross-country move

• kind of went wild with shopping for myself

In all that time, I was thinking about what I had actually accomplished in my Ph.D.

Would I do it again? Should I have done anything differently? Was it worth it?

Firstly, I would not go get a second Ph.D. I am so ready to work a more consistent schedule and better delineate my work and personal lives.

The only thing I would have done differently for my Ph.D would be to develop a knowledge management system (i.e. Zettelkasten, Second Brain) much sooner. I was still throwing away notes even as a first year, but it would have been much better to keep and refine them further as I grew as a researcher.

The question I want to focus on the most in this issue is that last question: Was it worth it?

This is a hugely personal question, and it would be disingenuous for me to pretend that I can answer it for everyone.

But, what I can do here is to offer my insight on a specific situation: getting a Ph.D after a Masters.

What many people outside of biostatistics may not know is that many Ph.D programs will prefer to admit students who already have Masters degrees.

Given that an MS in biostatistics is already considered a terminal degree, what is the value in getting a Ph.D afterwards?

1. Higher earning power

I’ll get the easy one out of the way first: having a Ph.D generally comes with earning more money over the course of one’s career. In the context of biostatistics, this stems from higher responsibilities expected from Ph.Ds.

In pharma, Ph.Ds are expected to help with the design of possibly multi-million dollar experiments. They are also expected to make sure that the statistical methodology is appropriate. Given the sheer diversity of data from various therapeutic areas, this is a lot of responsibility to bear. With more responsibility comes more money.

2. More job opportunities

This isn’t to say that for MS graduate can’t do this, but the gap in experience and expertise is often too large. After interning and talking to various companies, I hate to say that many of the higher job opportunities for biostatistics are locked behind a degree.

From personal experience, I can speak to why this might be the case. A typical biostatistics Ph.D lasts 4-5 years, while an MS lasts 2. Ph.D students and MS students often take the same classes, but Ph.D students may take more difficult versions.

So the literal time difference is 3 years. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but this is also 3 years of full-time learning, studying and research. The end result of these extra 3 years is more robust statistical expertise. From an employers perspective, this is 3 years of extra training that they don’t have to pay for, and they get a working employee right away.

This is to say, one form of value for a Ph.D is simply time. Time where a student can fully immerse themselves in getting better at statistics, without having to worry about money.

3. The skill of independence

If you apply for Ph.D programs, it’s inevitable that you will be asked why you want to pursue a Ph.D, especially if you already have an MS.

My answer back then was and still is: independence. As an MS, I felt like I could do the statistics if someone laid out what I needed to do. But I knew that this meant that I would inherently need a boss to always tell me what to do. I didn’t like that feeling, and I wanted the ability to do my own thing and create value on my own.

In the last point, I mentioned the 3 year difference between a Ph.D and an MS. This 3 year period is a trial by fire on learning how to be independent via research.

Research is really hard! You have to — independently — find a problem to solve, figure out existing solutions, imagine a better solution better than the current ones, demonstrate it’s better, and convince others of its use too. The first year after coursework is often a painful one for Ph.D students: it’s the first time that they have all the time in the world, and they need to be the ones to decide how to use that to further their degree. It’s a painful growing period.

But the payoff is huge. Being able to move and work independently is useful not just for research, but for pushing personal projects. When starting something new, there is a lot of power in having a framework for going from start to finish.

Feel free to riff of my answer in your own interviews. I think it plays well to admission committees.

That’s it for this one, see you in the next one.

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