Should I stay or should I take a year off and reapply? (Ph.D.)

[basicprogrammer]

Hello Grad lounge community,

 

I have finished my first year of an engineering Ph.D. program, as well a masters degree at my current institution.  I am currently in the Ph.D. portion of an MS/Ph.D. program and have become quite established in the school.  My school is small, and my interest in my current research is not strong, but something I think I could finish a Ph.D. in.

 

The grad school I am currently attending was the only one I was accepted in three years ago(Ranked in the top 50 or so in my program, but with a strong undergrad focus).  I had just above a 3.0 gpa when I applied, although I had lots of research experience and good letters of recommendation.  I have found that I am doing quite well in the coursework, and finished with above a 3.6 gpa in my third year of graduate school, and have made some progress on research(gave a conference talk).  Most of the faculty seem to like me, I am a very popular TA, I have made lots of friends here, and I like the overall area.

 

I am however wondering if I should reapply to a stronger school where I can work on research that I truly want to do.  This has been bugging me for really the last year.  I am the oddball in my research group as far as my topic, and it looks as though my adviser is not at all interested in funding me (a first year got funded for his project this summer over me for example, so I would have had to TA if I had not gotten an industry internship).  I'm afraid my advisor and I are just two nice people who aren't going to push each other and we'll just slog along being nice to each other without any real push to do great work.

 

At this point if I leave my Ph.D. program (say this summer) and reapply in the Fall(December '14) would that be a terrible thing to do?  Should I stick it out for another 3-4 years and try to finish my Ph.D. here?  I have enough money saved that I could take a year off or otherwise work on some projects I've always wanted to, and thus making me a stronger student. I'm looking for advice, keeping in the background I really do want to finish a Ph.D. and become a professor or lecturer. 

 

Thanks for your comments

[mipel]

It is important to really know what you would like to do in your life. If you are not sure about your PhD program or school your are doing it, you should take as much time as you need to take the right decision. A gap year is always good for thinking about life, future, job, carrier. You should never save time on this.

[juilletmercredi]

From just reading your post, it doesn't sound like are unhappy at all, you just have a general sense of unease when it comes to your research area or the quality of your program.  The funding is a different issue - if you don't have solid source of funding for the next 3-4 years, then I would say yes, go ahead and look for other places in which you could get stable funding that will take you through the doctoral program.  There's no reason to do a PhD especially in engineering without funding.

 

But if you are overall happy but just want to do better work - there are ways to do that without leaving.  You could collaborate on papers with people in other labs who do related work; you could begin to push your advisor by proposing ideas and doing much of the work on the papers yourself.

 

However, if you're going to leave and start over, I think before comprehensive exams is the time to do it (otherwise you may be forced to retake coursework and exams at the new place).  So no, it's not a terrible thing to leave a department that's a bad fit for you.  The key would be to find someone at another lab/program who would be willing to take you as a student - you'll have to be upfront with them about your reasons for leaving your current PhD program, and you'll also need the positive reference of your current advisor.