How bad does it look to drop out of grad school? | Hacker News Reader

How bad does it look to drop out of grad school?

7 pointsprincipia17 comments

I started Physics grad school this Fall, but I have recently considered dropping out, either to join an existing company or to start my own business. I am concerned about how this would look to future employers, both startups and non-startups. I know that getting an MS degree but no phD in Physics does not look great, as it shows that you quit the PhD program. But is getting an MS still better than nothing?

Also, will the companies (both startup and non-startup) take my grad school grades seriously? One of the classes is known to be very hard to Physics students, but I just don't have the motivation to study hard for the class, and I'm concerned about getting a really bad grade (possibly FAILing).

Recently I've been working on a programming project on my own, as a way to improve my programming skills, and I've been working on it with alot more motivation than studying for my Physics classes. I'm still fairly new to programming so I can't say I'm committed to programming over Physics yet.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." Steve Jobs

There's nothing wrong with quitting a Ph.D. program. To me, it looks like you're bright and intellectually curious, but you've got enough sense to ignore sunk costs, which is a valuable skill to have in a startup.

Some places might ask for grad school grades - Google, I'm guessing, they're strange about that sort of thing - but in my experience this is pretty damn rare, especially when the grades are of questionable relevancy. Never happened to me. If it did, I'd just laugh. My grade in Old Church Slavonic simply isn't relevant.

I quit a Ph.D. in History and got my consolation MA when I left. In my experience, most people don't think 'oh, he dropped out of a Ph.D. program' (although I've never hid that), they think 'wow, he got a MA from Stanford!' Not taking the MA would've been silly - now, with some work experience, it doesn't matter, but when starting out it was really valuable.

"Some places might ask for grad school grades - Google, I'm guessing, they're strange about that sort of thing - but in my experience this is pretty damn rare, especially when the grades are of questionable relevancy. "

It's not so much the possibility of getting low grades that troubles me as the fact that my grades may be EXTREMELY bad (ie, FAILing)

So you think getting an MA as opposed to just dropping out now is very valuable?

Which school are you enrolled in? The value of the MSc is two-fold:

1. What you learn on it and the quality of the contacts you make, and

2. The prestige and contacts that come with it.

It sounds as if you don't value (1), and (2) is only worth much with an elite university.

UT-Austin. I completed my undergrad at UCLA, so their reputations are similar. I'd like to move back home near my family, but Austin is a much better place for startups than LA

Quitting is a little bit better than not getting in to begin with. Getting an MS is getting an MS - loads of people "quit" grad school this way and it's rare that anyone outside sees it as more than you having an MS.

Also, try talking to your graduate school about whether you can switch to a different program. This is not always possible, but it may pose an alternative to getting your ass kicked by graduate-level theoretical mechanics.

Make money, get more customers than you can handle, then quit school. Or, why not transfer to a decent school to get your MBA? If you are that interested in business and you are young, consider it. If you are that unmotivated about Physics, you should get out.

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