Ivy League MS worth it without funding?

[preantepenultimate]

I'm preparing to start working toward an MS in engineering in the fall. My future plans possibly include a PhD, and either way I plan to start an R&D company to commercialize research. Ideally the PhD would be from a top school like MIT or Stanford, but I've applied to neither of those for my MS. So far I've been accepted into two schools... and now I have a dilemma.

First, I've been accepted into a good public research school. It's R1 and at a pretty highly ranked university, much more so than my alma mater. I'm a top applicant there with a potential fellowships, stipends, and a tuition waiver, so I would hope to finish with very little debt or even some savings depending on how frugal I am.

Next, I was accepted into an applied/engineering physics MS program at any Ivy League school. In the acceptance letter, they stated that there is absolutely no funding available for MS students. The best I can hope for is an hourly grading position, making less than 1% of my tuition. This is consistent with their public finaid page; there are no GRA/GTA positions or fellowships for MS students (M.Eng. and PhD students are a different story). I'd finish with a lot of debt.

Maybe I'm too cynical, or maybe I'm just not good enough to qualify for some secret financial assistance package, but it almost feels like the Ivy League school is using its name as a honeypot to get MS students as a source of revenue, especially compared to the fanfare and offers that came with my acceptance to the other school. My question is: are the quality and prestige of an Ivy League education really worth it? Would it help me get into the top PhD programs more than the public university would? And would the networking and name recognition be that much more useful for securing loans/capital for a business venture? Is there something I'm missing?

I feel like accepting the free ride at the public university would be the wise decision, but I'm not sure if I'd be missing a big opportunity with the prestigious school. I'd greatly welcome any advice.

[nevermind]

13 minutes ago, preantepenultimate said:

Maybe I'm too cynical, or maybe I'm just not good enough to qualify for some secret financial assistance package, but it almost feels like the Ivy League school is using its name as a honeypot to get MS students as a source of revenue, especially compared to the fanfare and offers that came with my acceptance to the other school. My question is: are the quality and prestige of an Ivy League education really worth it? Would it help me get into the top PhD programs more than the public university would? And would the networking and name recognition be that much more useful for securing loans/capital for a business venture? Is there something I'm missing?

 

Using self-funded Master's programs as a source of revenue is something a LOT of departments do, so you're not that cynical.

If you have a choice between a funded offer vs. a non-funded one, go with the funded one. An R1 highly ranked university will arguably give you as much visibility as an Ivy, if the department ranking/reputation is about the same (that is, if you're working with a Nobel Prize winner at Harvard vs. a no-name person at the R1...then things might matter differently) and you do good work. There's no guarantee in Ph.D. admissions. I have a Master's from a lower Ivy and got shut out at all the Ivies I applied to, so don't assume it will open *that* many doors. Your work matters a LOT more than name does. 

Edited March 2, 2016 by nevermind

[svent]

Lots of schools do this, but the ivies are notorious for this, especially Harvard and Penn. Plenty of people spend $100k on a Master's from these schools and get nothing out of it.

[thewarlock]

I'm in a similar dilemma. I got into Cornell (MS in Applied Physics) but there's no funding for MS students. I also have admits from Univ of Minnesota Twin Cities, MS in ECE and ASU, MS in ECE. All of them are a similar specialisation (Nanoelectronics and Biomedical devices). I've heard Cornell is amazing for Physics, so I really want to go. What should I do? The fee difference is almost about $ 5000 per year. 

 

Edit: I'm more interested in research, but I will probably be making a loan for my MS anyway. 

Edited March 2, 2016 by thewarlock

[Vulpix]

2 hours ago, nevermind said:

Using self-funded Master's programs as a source of revenue is something a LOT of departments do, so you're not that cynical.

If you have a choice between a funded offer vs. a non-funded one, go with the funded one. An R1 highly ranked university will arguably give you as much visibility as an Ivy, if the department ranking/reputation is about the same (that is, if you're working with a Nobel Prize winner at Harvard vs. a no-name person at the R1...then things might matter differently) and you do good work. There's no guarantee in Ph.D. admissions. I have a Master's from a lower Ivy and got shut out at all the Ivies I applied to, so don't assume it will open *that* many doors. Your work matters a LOT more than name does. 

Just curious, what is the "lower Ivy"?  Is that supposed to be Cornell?  Are there a handful of "lower ivies" (everything that isn't Princeton/Harvard/Yale?)?

3 hours ago, preantepenultimate said:

I'm preparing to start working toward an MS in engineering in the fall. My future plans possibly include a PhD, and either way I plan to start an R&D company to commercialize research. Ideally the PhD would be from a top school like MIT or Stanford, but I've applied to neither of those for my MS. So far I've been accepted into two schools... and now I have a dilemma.

First, I've been accepted into a good public research school. It's R1 and at a pretty highly ranked university, much more so than my alma mater. I'm a top applicant there with a potential fellowships, stipends, and a tuition waiver, so I would hope to finish with very little debt or even some savings depending on how frugal I am.

Next, I was accepted into an applied/engineering physics MS program at any Ivy League school. In the acceptance letter, they stated that there is absolutely no funding available for MS students. The best I can hope for is an hourly grading position, making less than 1% of my tuition. This is consistent with their public finaid page; there are no GRA/GTA positions or fellowships for MS students (M.Eng. and PhD students are a different story). I'd finish with a lot of debt.

Maybe I'm too cynical, or maybe I'm just not good enough to qualify for some secret financial assistance package, but it almost feels like the Ivy League school is using its name as a honeypot to get MS students as a source of revenue, especially compared to the fanfare and offers that came with my acceptance to the other school. My question is: are the quality and prestige of an Ivy League education really worth it? Would it help me get into the top PhD programs more than the public university would? And would the networking and name recognition be that much more useful for securing loans/capital for a business venture? Is there something I'm missing?

I feel like accepting the free ride at the public university would be the wise decision, but I'm not sure if I'd be missing a big opportunity with the prestigious school. I'd greatly welcome any advice.

I'm sure it's different in every field and department, but I recently looked at current Harvard PhDs in education (my field), and basically 90% of them had gotten a masters at Harvard or another Ivy.  I'm certain that this is not automatically true for everyone or every field, but there is definitely a community between such institutions.  They trust each other.  Like, "Oh, he/she went to Yale? Well, we trust that Yale only took him/her because he/she was excellent, so we'll do the same!"  I think the Ivys might "question" the admissions criteria of other schools.  Even though they're seeing the same GPAs and GREs.

[nevermind]

13 minutes ago, Heather1011 said:

Just curious, what is the "lower Ivy"?  Is that supposed to be Cornell?  Are there a handful of "lower ivies" (everything that isn't Princeton/Harvard/Yale?)?

I'm sure it's different in every field and department, but I recently looked at current Harvard PhDs in education (my field), and basically 90% of them had gotten a masters at Harvard or another Ivy.  I'm certain that this is not automatically true for everyone or every field, but there is definitely a community between such institutions.  They trust each other.  Like, "Oh, he/she went to Yale? Well, we trust that Yale only took him/her because he/she was excellent, so we'll do the same!"  I think the Ivys might "question" the admissions criteria of other schools.  Even though they're seeing the same GPAs and GREs.

(1) Lower Ivy is used usually to denote an Ivy that isn't HYP. See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lower_ivy But yes. I attended Cornell. 

(2) Yes, obviously going to a well-known institution will bring a certain academic pedigree to your application. However, the issue at hand is whether or not you should take a funded offer from an R1 institution vs. an unfunded offer from an Ivy. To me, it's a no brainer. A Master's degree from an R1 institution (all else being equal) is not going to be a hindrance to future Ph.D. applications and people seem to overestimate the influence of prestige of an Ivy Master's degree. Certainly, there are some programs that serve as feeders to other Ph.D. programs (Harvard's MTS degree comes to mind). However, when you consider faculty from R1 institutions likely received their Ph.D.s from Ivy's (if the general rule of thumb is to believed...that you end up teaching on the tier below where you receive your Ph.D.), LORs will *likely* be known by Ivy adcoms, you're not going into debt for it, and you likely get good research opportunities...a funded offer R1 is generally the better choice. 

[svent]

I think Yale is a "lower" ivy. It, along with Penn, is more of a top 20 school than top 5 in most fields I've looked into. I've never met anyone from there in STEM fields (fellow students going there, professors who'd done their graduate work there, etc.). I've met plenty of people from Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, even Penn. It has a great law school though. I guess it's very highly ranked at the undergraduate level.

[blacknighterrant]

10 hours ago, preantepenultimate said:

I'm preparing to start working toward an MS in engineering in the fall. My future plans possibly include a PhD, and either way I plan to start an R&D company to commercialize research. Ideally the PhD would be from a top school like MIT or Stanford, but I've applied to neither of those for my MS. So far I've been accepted into two schools... and now I have a dilemma.

First, I've been accepted into a good public research school. It's R1 and at a pretty highly ranked university, much more so than my alma mater. I'm a top applicant there with a potential fellowships, stipends, and a tuition waiver, so I would hope to finish with very little debt or even some savings depending on how frugal I am.

Next, I was accepted into an applied/engineering physics MS program at any Ivy League school. In the acceptance letter, they stated that there is absolutely no funding available for MS students. The best I can hope for is an hourly grading position, making less than 1% of my tuition. This is consistent with their public finaid page; there are no GRA/GTA positions or fellowships for MS students (M.Eng. and PhD students are a different story). I'd finish with a lot of debt.

Maybe I'm too cynical, or maybe I'm just not good enough to qualify for some secret financial assistance package, but it almost feels like the Ivy League school is using its name as a honeypot to get MS students as a source of revenue, especially compared to the fanfare and offers that came with my acceptance to the other school. My question is: are the quality and prestige of an Ivy League education really worth it? Would it help me get into the top PhD programs more than the public university would? And would the networking and name recognition be that much more useful for securing loans/capital for a business venture? Is there something I'm missing?

I feel like accepting the free ride at the public university would be the wise decision, but I'm not sure if I'd be missing a big opportunity with the prestigious school. I'd greatly welcome any advice.

Ok...... you want to go into the industry and not stay in academia and honestly you have the wrong approach for that. I've actually done a considerable amount of research on what the best route is. Going PhD if you want to work in the industry is usually not typically a good idea for a few reasons. 1. It is generally considered too specific to be useful for job applications, unless you find the perfect job, so they usually won't want to hire you because they'd have to pay you more for the same work and they believe that you might have forgotten more general aspects of electrical engineering that are applicable to to job because you were so focused on something else during your PhD. 2. Based on salary data, having a PhD usually does not help much in terms of pay-scale and job advancement once in the field. Instead of getting a PhD it is far smarter to get an MBA, an MBA makes advancement to managerial positions more likely while raising your payscale considerably more than a PhD would. In addition, an MBA gives you plenty of fallback options (for instance you could go into business or more easily transition into finance or investment banking which is something a lot of people trained in engineering degrees do. An Ivy degree would definitely help you get into a better MBA program and an MBA would definitely help you when securing loans. Another mistake you made is going into Engineering Physics for your masters. While it is true that an Engineering Physics degree would allow you to apply for many engineering jobs, those with physics degrees instead of a specific engineering degree often start with lower salaries and there are indeed some jobs that only accept the Engineering degree. In addition, Engineering Physics is not typically ABET accredited, which can make a huge deal depending on where you went to school for your undergrad. If you do not have an ABET accredited bachelors and do not go to a school with an ABET accredited Engineering Physics program, then it will make getting a PE license more annoying if you wish to do so in the future (A PE license isn't necessary, but it generally increases payscale and there are some jobs that require it). An Electrical Engineering degree would have been far more marketable than an Engineering Physics degree. Next, it isn't good to overvalue ivy league schools in engineering, there are far better programs at state schools than at most of the Ivy's (GA Tech, UCB, UIUC, Purdue, etc) and many ivy's may be ranked higher than they deserve to be as a result of general prestige. The type of research you do (research fit) and who you do it with will be far more important in PhD decisions than whether or not you went to the Ivy in PhD decisions if you choose to go that route (for example, if you did research in a sub-field of engineering that doesn't even exist at one of the top programs then it would be far harder for you to get into that program than if you had gone to another school and had years of practice in the new program you want to get into). But again, a PhD isn't typically all that helpful in the industry, you should only really go after it if you love research for the sake of research or want a career in academia. If you are trying to use it to be more marketable it might be worth considering switching the type of program you are in for your PhD (for instance mastering in electrical engineering and getting a doctorate in mechanical engineering) in order to display that you are extremely well qualified in multiple aspects of engineering (honestly this choice is also questionable at best, it could  be an amazing decision depending on the employer and job you want). 

[juilletmercredi]

Ignore the "Ivy League" label. Public or private isn't the question here, because some of the BEST engineering schools are public universities - like Michigan, Berkeley, UIUC, Purdue, UCSD, UCSB, Georgia Tech, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas A&M...)

What is the reputation of the public university in your field? Which university is it? Ask them where MS students tend to go after graduation - what's job placement like and do any of them go onto PhDs? Where you go for your master's is a little important for admissions to PhD programs but not terribly important. As someone said upthread I think people vastly overestimate the importance of institutional prestige for their MS program with respect to admissions to PhD programs.

Also, think about it this way. Sure, maybe going to Princeton or Cornell would give you a tiny leg up - but would that leg up be worth $120,000 over the course of the first 10-20 years of your career? Because that's just going to be the principal on your debt if you have to borrow for the entire thing. That's not even looking at the interest. How long is it going to take you to repay that? What will you have to sacrifice or delay to repay that kind of heavy debt?

It's true that there's a community between highly-ranked institutions, but that's true for ANY high-ranked institution, not just Ivies. For example, in my field, a person is just as likely to be respected if they got their training from Michigan or UCLA as if they did from Princeton or Harvard. That because Michigan and UCLA have top ten programs in my field and the training is roughly equivalent...in fact, UCLA and Michigan are ranked higher than my Ivy graduate school in my field.

Also, frankly, I find the concept of "lower Ivy" to be ridiculous.  All 8 of the Ivy League institutions are excellent schools. But typically speaking, when people say "lower Ivy" they mean Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, and Penn, and usually also Columbia. They usually are not referring to Yale (and never to Harvard or Princeton).

Going PhD if you want to work in the industry is usually not typically a good idea for a few reasons 1. It is generally considered too specific to be useful for job applications, unless you find the perfect job, so they usually won't want to hire you because they'd have to pay you more for the same work and they believe that you might have forgotten more general aspects of electrical engineering that are applicable to to job because you were so focused on something else during your PhD. 2. Based on salary data, having a PhD usually does not help much in terms of pay-scale and job advancement once in the field. Instead of getting a PhD it is far smarter to get an MBA, an MBA makes advancement to managerial positions more likely while raising your payscale considerably more than a PhD would.

You know, I used to think the same thing. But I currently work in the Seattle tech industry. When I was looking for jobs (just last year), as well as when I idly browse jobs (this year for my husband, who's looking to move out here), I've actually found a LOT of jobs in the industry that ask for STEM PhDs. Most of those jobs are in statistics/math, in computer science, or in engineering. There are a lot of technology companies that are recognizing the value of research-trained PhD scientists on their staff, especially companies that are trying to develop innovative new products to stay ahead of the market. For example, at my very large technology company we have an entire division that's set aside for basic research and they primarily hire PhD-level researchers. I've noticed that most data science positions are preferring people with PhDs in the related fields (statistics or CS). My team is also made up mostly of PhD-level social scientists, and in my field, the PhD is a commonly asked for credential. Add that to credentials creep - you need a BA to do even the most low-level work in a lot of companies nowadays, and more challenging field-based work is for people with experience or MAs - and a PhD in the sciences and engineering is not as useless as previously thought.

I'd still give the general advice that you probably don't need a PhD to go into industry, and that an MS would be just fine...but I would temper that advice by telling the candidate to double-check by doing some job searching right now and see what kind of credentials are asked for in job ads that look interesting to you. You can also look at people's profiles on LinkedIn and do some informational interviews with folks in industry positions and see what degrees they have and what they feel like you need to have to succeed in their industry.

I also think it's not necessarily far smarter to get an MBA - it depends on what you want to do. In my company I think someone with an MS or PhD in a science field is just as likely to advance to a managerial position as someone with an MBA. For example, in my chain of command (UX research), my boss has an MA in my social science field, her boss has a PhD in my social science field. His boss (who manages our team as well as engineering/techical teams) has a BA in engineering. That guy's boss's boss has an engineering BA, and his - who's at the executive level and reports to the CEO - boss has an engineering BA. You don't hit an MBA until you get to our CEO in our chain of command. Lots of leaders in technical fields don't have MBAs and instead have a BA or MS (or PhD) in engineering/science/tech and some years of experience/climbing the ladder. Again, though, looking into this on LinkedIn and by talking to people will illuminate this more.

[svent]

"Lower ivy" is a pretty ridiculous term, but no more ridiculous than people who have a hard-on for seeing the name Harvard or Yale or Penn, and who wouldn't even recognize UCLA as a top school.

[yogi77]

I would honestly go for the funded program. TA jobs hardly make a dent in tuition cost of an un-funded program, and frankly they can be a major distraction from coursework/research.