About to finish what I feel was a disappointing masters, and now I don't know if I should apply to PhD programs

[HYHY02]

Hi everyone,

so I'm about to finish my masters (well trying to in the next few months), and at this point, the self-loathing is kicking in.

 

For a little background, I went to a fairly average school, volunteered with some profs, and ended deciding I would like to try graduate school, at least for a masters, and depending on how it went, then decide whether to continue on to a PhD. I was very naive when it came to this whole grad school application thing, so I ended up applying to only 2 schools. One was my okay undergraduate school (which would further allow me to save by living with my parents), and the other was my dream school. I was in serious discussion with one professor from this dream school, and ultimately found out in June (while I was planning on starting the same September), that he didn't get the funding needed. In an attempt to not waste any more time and start my masters that fall, and what was in hindsight a bad move, I decided to go back to my undergraduate school and work with a prof who offered me a position, in a topic I was indifferent about.

 

I ultimately feel like I got very little supervision, and ended up learning everything on my own which was often frustrating (his students end up teaching him about techniques/methods that he should be familiar with). Worse was that there ended up being next to zero funding. My project ultimately ended up being based on an incomplete data set that was collected before I came into the lab, with many issues. It felt as though I was trying to squeeze blood out of a stone with this data, and what was most frustrating was that I never got to spend a nickel on improving this dataset, because of the zero funding. What bothers me most is that the PI seems to not have a care in the world about it. Multiple grad students are drowning, both due to the lack of supervision (never on campus/responding to emails) and a lack of initiative on his part (I know for a fact multiple students have gone to the department heads to complain about him).

 

The worse part is that now I see other students from the same cohort, finishing up their masters, and doing so on great terms, some even publishing their papers in high impact journals! Of course, these students were in some of the more prominent labs at this school, while I sit here with nothing to show for 2 years of work. As I've been told before, comparing yourself to others is a game you'll often lose. I'm also going to end up finishing this masters in 2.5 years instead of the 2, since I waited for potential funding to complete the data set, which never came.

 

I'm not saying I deserve success, but I feel like I ended up putting myself in a position more so to fail than to succeed. That came down to being naive when first applying. Knowing what I know now, I feel much more confident in how I should go about applying to work with various PIs, and getting a sense if it'd be a good fit.

 

Now at this point, I know what type of research I want to be involved in, and how to go about getting a better idea if a potential school/PI is a good fit for me. I enjoyed research, but I also hated the whole grad school thing in general at times due to the other issues mentioned. I feel strongly about continuing a PhD, but hopefully in a school/field of my liking, but with how this masters went and comparing myself with others, I really feel like I'm not competitive at this point. I feel like I shot myself in the foot, and where as others can build of their masters, I can't.

 

Sorry for the rambling, but I guess my question really is, to what extent can a masters, with no publications, negatively impact a PhD application? I'm hoping the skills I learned would mean something, but I've been also told that finishing a masters with no publication can hurt you quite a bit if you plan on then applying to separate PhD programs.

 

Any opinions on this would be great.

 

[TakeruK]

I am sorry to hear that you did not get the supervision you needed to succeed. Picking a good supervisor is important because there are lot of different supervising styles and some styles don't work for some students. I think you can use this experience to help you find a better supervisor for a PhD program. It's easier to think about this time as wasted but really, I hope you still learned a lot about what works for you and what doesn't.

 

On the other hand, I think the other aspects of your program is normal, especially for a Masters program. Most science is done on very little funding and most Master projects, at least in my field, involve analysis on data already collected. There's not that much time to collect new data, validate it, and then do science on it during the short MS program. Also, Masters projects may just be a lower priority for the professor than the other work. 

 

In my opinion, you don't need to have publications from a Masters program. I have zero publications from mine and it was a research-based Masters program. Sometimes, MS projects are not really even publishable. The point of a Masters is to learn research skills and "practice" on a project. Similarly, the first few things you try in a PhD program might not work out either and do not get published. 

 

So to answer your final question, I don't think it's a huge deal if you do not have a publication from your Masters program. In fact, it would be very difficult to do so (good for your cohortmates I guess) because you would be applying to PhD programs at the beginning of your second year, and in order to have a publication by then, you would have to have already written and submitted a paper during the summer, just ~9 to 10 months after starting!

 

Instead, what's more important is that you are able to show PhD programs that you have significantly improved as a researcher while in grad school and did not just "stagnate". You will need to talk to your supervisor and see what kind of LOR they would write. Find other people in your BS/MS program that you have had a good relationship with to write you strong LORs. You should also think about how you will frame your MS experience in your application. I know what you wrote here is just frustration but ensure you don't pass on any negativity about your supervisor and your program. Focus on the positives. What did you learn? What did you achieve? Talk about these points when discussing your MS experience in your application.

 

Sure, you might not be able to build off your Masters as those who have publications from it, but you have not shot yourself in the foot or anything. At this point, focus on what you have learned and the small things in lab that you have achieved, rather than flashy things like publications.

[HYHY02]

Thanks for the encouraging words TakeruK as well as the advice. I'll definitely have to be careful in discussing my masters experience, just because knowing me, I'll end up giving off a lot of negativity which I'd like to avoid at all costs. Thanks again.