Someone asked me about choosing a program and what I meant in my previous comment, and here is my answer to that:

No one can tell you what degree would be “better” even if you have a clear definition of “value”. The job market is constantly changing anyway so you might as well choose what you like.

With the regard to my comment on graduate study, I’m referring to the process of getting an advance degree in general. Graduate school is something that’s very different from college. Often you’ll have to develop your own research project, and “research” means that you are going into something unknown so no one can really tell you want to do and you pretty much have to figure out things by yourself. Good advisers can help a lot, but still only to a certain extend. Basically, you are on your own. Everyone I know (including myself) have some dark periods though out the graduate program and those can be very depressing times. Another thing is that while you are in grad school, you’ll see all your friends from college getting real jobs and making real money. After a couple years of that you may wonder if you made the right choice or not (particularly true in the US because it takes longer on average to get a PhD here).

All these graphs came to me one Saturday afternoon when I was feeling particularly annoyed with everything. I jotted them down on a bit of paper then forgot about them, until a housemate and I were having a joint moaning session. He recommended that I put them on my blog, and it turns out my most popular post is not about statistics, programming or databases, but about how rubbish doing a PhD is. It was even picked up on Genome Technology and ScienceMag Careers.

In response to the questions about bioinformatics, I think there’ll always be a need for them. More and more data is being produced from high through put techniques, that requires people to analyse this full time.

As for Gonzo’s point, I don’t know. I starting to think about what I’ll do after a PhD. Location is sort of important, more the country than specific city. I think I’d go anywhere if I thought the work was interesting.

I definitely agree with chkuo’s last point that you have to love what you’re doing to get through a PhD.

That said, graduate study in bioinfo or any other field can be a really tough experience. You have to make sure that you love what you are doing to get through the bad times.

Its disheartening to see call centre workers earn a similar amount.

Some sound advice which I’m will certainly take on board through my studies.

Cheers Mike

“Go when you’re hot”, but know when to switch off too.

For the toughest part is what you show in the first graph. There is not a linear correlation between amount of work and results. This can be really frustrating sometimes.