Masters VS PhD - Choosing what to purse

Having finished my undergraduate very recently, I was not so long ago put in the midst of a pretty big(?) decision - whether I wanted to pursue a PhD or a masters (or go directly into industry, which I do not discuss here) after I finish my bachelors. Not only do I feel like this is a very common dilemma faced by graduating students, but I also feel that some expectations/thought-process needs a reality check when it comes to such questions. I get asked about why I chose what I chose quite often, and more often than not I find that listeners find it hard to digest the rationale I give them. Here, I intend to talk about it in detail. For the record, I chose Masters :)

First off, it is important to realize that choosing a PhD is a pretty big commitment in time as well as career direction. When you choose to get into a doctorate program, you commit to a life in research (you can switch later, of course, but that is not the way to think about it), not minding the fact that your career trajectory might (and most likely will) be a gradual slope at the start, living off a modest income for the majority of your bachelor life while your friends and colleagues get to spend and live. However, this may be worth it in the long run, if research and development really excite you, and setting and running new experiments and testing novel ideas is your thing. Choosing masters, on the other hand, is lesser of a commitment since (1) it lasts only for 1-2 years, depending on your program and university, and (2) it can serve as a step to later pursue PhD, so it delays that decision temporarily.

Now, students choose a masters for a variety of reasons. Masters serves as a way to specialize in a narrower area that you have found interest in and want to dive deeper into, or it gives a way to gain some understanding of concepts from a related but different field as your undergrad. One viable reason is also just to expose yourself to the facilities in a university (labs/equipment etc) and also to the job market there (since offices tend to hire students from renowned universities in their respective countries). All of these reasons are of course, valid, and may appeal to different people differently depending on their aptitude and career goals.

PhD, on the other hand, is pursued with the sole purpose of diving headfirst into research as a career option, be it as a researcher in industry or a faculty member at a university. Job market is less of a concern, since 4/5 years down the line when you graduate, the landscape will inevitably have changed. Courses are also not really taken into consideration as much (with the exception of one case, that I discuss later). Focus is given primarily to research interest match with faculties who you want to work under, and the laboratory environment, since that decides to a large extent what the quality of your research output will be.

All this gives a decent idea of how one should go about choosing what to take up. Here, I try and lay out a point-by-point system of what questions need to be answered for one to be able to make an aware decision. The idea is to set a systematic way of going about this, and these set of rules are in no way binding or exhaustive.

(1) How much does research excite you at this moment ?
Think about all the research projects you might have done in the past, in way of internships, work under/with professors or research scholars, course projects or self-projects. Think about all the aspects of it - Problem definition, Literature Review, Discussing ideas, experimentation and finally documentation. Not giving a lot of weight to the outcome of each research endeavour, focus on how spending time on it made you feel, and compare it to the other tasks you might have taken up - implementation projects, development etc.
It is probably worth to note here that the perspective of students are very often skewed either because they have not had much success in such projects (no publications or other forms of validation) or they realize that the learning curve is steep/long term monetary benefits are delayed. For the purpose of this stage, however, separate yourself from those considerations and focus on pure interests.

(2) What professional/personal values are more dear to you, currently ?
Now this is a complicated point, and an under-rated one at that. Values can be a broad term, encompassing a whole variety of attributes or goals depending on the person. What I refer to here, however, are the ones relating to what you pursue and what you get out of it (i.e. professional), and what kind of life you desire (personal).
Professionally, what are your views on freedom in the workplace, on hierarchies and stricter top-down systems of management, on sources of money and the stability of it, on getting to travel frequently or getting to stay put, on how your earnings are distributed throughout your career, on what kind of impact you wish to see for your work, and finally on job security. For each of these different questions, the answers shed light on what kind of profession you want to get into, and by extension whether PhD is for you.
Personally, what do you value more in your life. Does going through life with its processes - Marriage, kids etc. at the right times feel important to you. Do you mind travelling to a new/distant country away from friends and family, or does staying with them and/or giving them the option to stay in their home country with you matter to you more ? How ready are your parents and other dependents with your decision, and how much does their readiness matter to you ? These values may have secondary sources of motivation, since such decisions usually have familial ties to it. This is why some people choose to ignore these until it’s too late. However, in my opinion, such questions need to be answered, at least at a level where your priorities are clear to you.
How exactly you weight your professional and personal values is up to you, but an advice that has worked for me more often than not is to go with your gut. A lot of times, you already know what values more to you, but other sources of pollution corrupt it and make the decision more difficult than it should be. Just take out a pen and paper, write exactly what you feel, and then re-read it, and you’ll realize that you talk about some things more than others. Another way can be to discuss with people who do not know you or with whom you have had no discussion on the topic yet, and closely monitor exactly how you feel about each point they bring up, in favour of a PhD or against it.

(3) Where do you see yourself in the long term ?
This is, for obvious reasons, not obvious (intended word play :D). This requires some thought. Think about what an ideal life would look like for you, and what all it should entail. Try and picture it as clearly as you can in your mind. Once you have this, try and answer the questions from the previous point in this context. They need not be as detailed or even coherent as they were for the short term goals, even a rough direction is progress. This is important as the previous two considerations are in themselves too myopic, and a holistic longer-term view is also required before one can finalize on a decision that has the consequences this one does.

Once you have passed through the three stages of thought, try and merge them and see which career path fits for them. You will invariably see that you feel comfortable with one path more than the other, and the pointed reasons for it may also begin to form. If you have really given time to the questions asked and thought about it, you should clearly feel a pull towards one of the directions from your gut. This is not to say, of course, that you have decided, but you’re close. Now all that is left is talking to more people. Armed with your profound wisdom, talk to people you haven’t confided in earlier, and speak about the points that bother you most about each career path. Talk to people from both sides, those that have chosen to pursue a PhD and those who haven’t. Focus on not only the answers they give, but also how you react to them. You will slowly feel conviction forming inside your head.

This is of course just a blueprint, if you will, of how one might want to go about making this decision. Other factors need to be taken into consideration too, of course, like the course of progress in a field, or the political scenarios if that is of effect etc., but these are more objective and therefore easier to fit with the more abstract parts of the decision making that the above questions aim to rattle. Needless to say, never shy away from asking for support from friends and family throughout this entire process, since they may help open doors of thought for you that you had not considered yourself but were worth considering.

One aspect I have not talked about is the fact that a lot of schools (particularly outside Europe) offer the option to take an early exit from a PhD, in that you graduate with a masters. This may be of relevance if you feel a push to pursue a PhD, but you don’t feel confident that you will like working on hardcore research for the extended duration. This can also be of help in cases of advisor-advisee mismatch, or other factors that may cause you to discontinue. However, early exit should never be looked on as a goal. You should not enter a PhD program hoping to exit in 2/3 years with a free masters.

All of this said, I think it is important to end with this - Even though this may feel like a very big decision, one that carries the potential to make or break your life, there is no one right answer to it. You can make a grossly incorrect decision at this point and still end up doing exactly what you wanted in your career. Therefore, take this up with seriousness and maturity, but there is little point in stressing over it for an extended period of time.

Taking the liberty to modify a known saying -
“One bad decision does not define you. What you do after it does.”
All the best !