Dilemmas of an undergraduate

[paraschopra]

I am presently doing Biotechnology Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering, India. Being inclined towards the fields of Computational Biology, Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, I want to make my career in these fields.

I initially planned to apply to graduate programs in Fall '08 at good US universities. However, presently, I have had enough warnings from present graduate students or fresh PhDs (from US universities) to give me second thoughts regarding my decision. The majority of them are having difficulty in finding a job and advise me that one must be *really* sure about jumping into a graduate program.

Is the situation in Industry/Academia really bleak for fresh PhDs in computational biology/systems biology? And, moreover, how can an undergraduate student be *really* sure about getting into a graduate school (until he gets into one)? Also, as far as career prospects are concerned, is there any relative advantages of a PhD degree over a Master's degree?

Kindly help.

Sincerely,

Paras Chopra