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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm another who's surprised by the amount of disdain expressed for PhDs here.  Many PhD programs are super competitive and difficult to get admitted to (and finish). For my PhD program, there were 600 applications the year I applied.  Of those, ~60 applicants were interviewed in person.  Of those, 20 were offered admission.  My cohort was 14 students (only 13 finished--one, randomly, dropped out after the first year to go to Yale for law school).  So with a 3.3% admission rate, it is literally harder to get into my PhD program than to med school.

After my PhD (at age 26), I did four years of postdoctoral research training at two different institutions (the first an Ivy).  I have a ton of education, about as much as my spouse, who is an MD.

Given how competitive these programs are these days, competitive applicants not only need to have top grades and GRE scores, but usually need to have already have co-authored peer-reviewed publications by the time they apply.  I usually steer undergrads/recent grads away from my field, unless they are just one of those super wonky, bright kids who doesn't care that much about high pay and just couldn't see themselves doing anything else.  It's a long, tough road.

Our 5yo kid goes back and forth about whether she wants to become mom or dad's type of Dr.  I just tell her she should best both of us and be an MD/PhD. :)[/quote]

Just be a productive member of society.  
Many more PhD programs are not competitive whatsoever, yet still cannot accept a bloated number of people who want to stay in the country or avoid a real job.  
I say this as someone who quit an econ PhD program at Princeton (at year 4) to go work in investment mgmt., and now I work on the ethics/legal side of Artificial Intelligence.  
No way I could have stayed in the sleepy, slow world of academia and been happy or satisfied. Maybe medical research is different but we know way too many people from krappy programs who can't find their way out of a paper bag or just want to teach at Tier 3 schools forever and ever. 
[/quote]

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