second Phd or not
May 31, 2009 1:12 PM   Subscribe

second Phd?

Hi everyone.

i posted a question about what to do with my Phd in physics.
now I would like to seek advice with a more specific question:
should I pursue a second Phd?


A bit background info:
I got Phd in theoretical phsycis from a US university in august 2008. and failed to find satisfying academic job there. I returned to Korea my home country.
Here i managed to find some teachingi jobs. After having worked in Korea for nearly one year, I decide that I prefer my life in US better.
Besides, i do not have good job prospects in my home country either.

So I am now pondering applying for US Phd again this fall and if successful I could go back to US 10 fall.
This is a big decision to make, and I am wondering about several things

I I wonder how admission committee would think of my application for another Phd. This time I will apply for statistics, which gives more job opportunities than theoretical physics. Definitely I have a lot of math and statistics course on my undergrad and graduate transcript.
And I can take the GRE tests etc (I did very well the first time)
However, will admission committee like my application or not?

To be more specific, my cv would look like ( *by the time of my application) undergraduate degree in Korea followed by Phd studes in US plus 1 year of teaching in Korea. Do i have good chance of success this time or not? any idea?
posted by nootnoot1 to Education (16 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Getting a Ph.D. is pretty rare. Getting a second Ph.D. is really rare. You're probably going to need a pretty compelling academic reason beyond "I want to move back to the states and need a job," to convince an admissions committee that this is really something you want to do and that they want to be part of. I friend of mine just finished his 2d Ph.D., and let me assure you, the guy is a pretty odd duck. Not to mention the fact that he's about 35 and hasn't had a real job basically ever. He's just finished up a post-doc year and is about to start a second... because he couldn't get a tenure track job. With 2 Ph.D.s, one in Physics, one in the History and Philosophy of Science (he basically did philosophy of physics).

So two things, I guess:

1) You are going to need a narrative about how getting this second Ph.D. fits with your academic and professional career beyond an excuse to get another visa.

2) Even if you get it, there's no guarantee of a job. The academic job market sucks pretty bad, and a second degree doesn't actually improve your chances all that much.
posted by valkyryn at 1:48 PM on May 31, 2009


You asked this question last time.

For the record, I think this is a bad idea. You need to focus more on your ultimate goal. Treading water for a few more years in another PhD is not a great way to achieve most goals.
posted by grouse at 1:57 PM on May 31, 2009


A lot of schools do not take applicants who already have a PhD. Thankfully! You would be doing yourself a disservice by getting another PhD. What you need are some real world skills. Also, it seems that you are mostly interested in another PhD because it would allow you to come to the US. If that is your goal you should really focus your energy on postdoc positions.
posted by Brennus at 2:08 PM on May 31, 2009


There are already too many PhD's in the world. Use your education for a productive pursuit. Found a business. Tutor children. Use your math skills to play the financial markets.

Do something, anything, other than staying in school.

One thing I would also mention, to anyone considering any type of graduate school is to remember to take into consideration the opportunity costs of going. That is, what do you give up (income, travel, an opportunity to build wealth, start a family, etc.) by embarking on an academic program. Too many people I know who have pursued graduate education find that the job market for their field, whether it be law, business, academia, or whatever, is not as promising as they once assumed. And so they have regrets about the opportunities they gave up in favor of a demanding degree.

Having earned a PhD is an impressive accomplishment. But the job market for them sucks, as it does for most graduates of graduate school programs. Pursuing another one doesn't necessarily make you more employable, any more than does a JD who pursues an MBA under the assumption that the two degrees are better than one.
posted by dfriedman at 2:32 PM on May 31, 2009 [2 favorites]


^1 Brennus on a post-doc. Once you have a PhD, the typical path to re-specialization is to do a post-doc not another PhD. Obviously, you can't do a post-doc in a completely new field, but it's possible to find a similar field where you could apply your stats and research knowledge. Engineering or bioinformatics type fields might be interested in your skills.

Valkyryn is right that if you do apply for another PhD, you have to make a really good case for yourself. If you look like you're trying to make a career of being a student or that you don't have focused research goals, I don't know what programs would take you (and any programs that would take you probably would not place you in an academic job).
posted by parkerjackson at 2:51 PM on May 31, 2009


You could rreally do with focussing on what could make you more attractive to potential employers who could offer you a post doctoral position related to your first PhD.

Do you regularly look through the sites for jobs in your field, and then apply for them, even if they are not perfect fits - you should.

Have you written all the papers that were possible off the back of your first PhD? Publications will get you jobs.

You could try identifying potential employers in academia, working up ideas for projects based in your area (i.e. so you have form) and approaching academics on the basis of you doing all (or at least nearly all) of the writing up the bid.
posted by biffa at 3:03 PM on May 31, 2009


As others have said, with a PhD in theoretical physics it will be possible to get a postdoc in some pretty disparate fields -- I know several people who had PhDs in string theory that went directly onto postdocs in biological fields: bioinformatics, systems biology, computational neuroscience. From there one can get a job in Pharma or whatnot. You can totally beef up your statistics skills in such a postdoc, too.

Plus, a postdoc pays better than a PhD stipend. (Not horribly much better, though... sigh...)
posted by wyzewoman at 3:09 PM on May 31, 2009


Yeah, this is kind of weird. I remember you asking this question before. Anyway, I think the folks above are 100% right. Getting a second PhD is not the answer to your dilemma here. Where are you on the research/publication front? That's what will get you a job in higher education in the US. Also, I hate to say this, but I think getting a second PhD may actually hurt your chances of landing a job. As you know, most fields are pretty specialized, and my experience serving as a graduate student on an academic job search committee tells me that the second PhD is probably going to make you look noncommittal/wishy washy instead of super smart. That's a definite negative in the eyes of many departments, who are most often looking for someone who is dedicated to one particular field.
posted by theantikitty at 3:10 PM on May 31, 2009


Do you even like statistics? Seriously, you really are selling this as a way to get a job in the US. Don't you remember what getting a PhD was like the first time around? It sucks. Only your passion for your discipline can make you stick with it.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:56 PM on May 31, 2009


141 million people work in the US. Most of them don't have PhD's.
posted by PueExMachina at 5:27 PM on May 31, 2009


I agree with the prior stuff about it being very hard to get into a second phd... but not completely. Because it might be easier to get a student visa for more education, and then transition into a job from there. I'm not sure. Talking to someone who knows the ins and outs of the immigration system would be step 1.

I wouldn't do a second phd for any reason other than the immigration system. I imagine that you can do most of the non-academic jobs that a phd in statistics would get (quant at some kind of hedge fund, if there are any of those jobs left post crash, various things in the insurance industry, etc.) with theoretical physics, no? I mean, don't you have to have pretty high-octane stats as well as (obviously) math in general to do that?
posted by paultopia at 5:47 PM on May 31, 2009


Best answer: I remember when you asked this question before. You don't know what you want, so education is the default thing to do, as it is for many Koreans. You prefer life in the US because it's more comfortable and because it's something of a vacation from your life in Korea. You didn't live with your parents in America, but most likely you do in Korea. You miss the freedom, I'd bet. I would guess that your parents will continue to support you because they, too, believe that more education is always better. Koreans have a tendency to believe this, but it isn't true.

You need to decide what kind of job you want; only then can you identify what kind of skills you need. More than that, you need to decide what you want out of life. A second PhD won't provide the answers to those questions and neither will AskMe.
posted by smorange at 6:16 PM on May 31, 2009


You could teach high school physics in the US. You could teach physics at a community college in the US.
posted by anniecat at 8:22 PM on May 31, 2009


To amplify, as one who has hired several PhDs, the point of getting a PhD is to show that one can do that sort of work, that one is self-starting, that one has that sort of mental discipline to follow through on a large project. The knowledge or expertise gained during the doctorate is relevant, but less important. I expect, for example, that someone with that level of training could become similarly well-informed in a related discipline by themselves in a few years, on the job.

Thus, you've already proven your ability by doing the PhD once; there is no need to do it again. If you want to change subject fields, look for a post-doc in that area. This is a very common thing to do.
posted by bonehead at 8:05 AM on June 1, 2009


I stumbled upon this book at my local library: Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower (Scientific Survival Skills). You might want to see if you're able to pick up a copy at your library/bookshop.

Additionally, the linked amazon page also lists several other books which are similar in nature, and might be worth your reading as well.

Echoing what others have said as above, you definitely need more relevant working experience as opposed to more education. Your PhD is enough of a proof of your expertise and ability to learn, and there isn't much reason for you to pursue another one, especially if you want to get into applied stuffs. This is doubly true if you want to get into programming field (as hinted in your previous question in early 2009), since programming is pretty much a self-learned skill.

If your motivation of going back to study is to immigrate and gain employment in the private sector, then why not go for a shorter graduate level study in applied fields (biotech, CS, stats) in other countries apart from USA ? You could probably go for a short 1 year (post) graduate diploma in those fields in Australia or New Zealand, for example, which would also give you a graduate search visa for job search upon graduation. I think there might be several other countries where you could get such visa of similar nature, so you might want to google the info.
posted by joewandy at 9:42 AM on June 1, 2009


Here's the Post-study Work Visa for International Graduate Students in the UK.
posted by joewandy at 9:46 AM on June 1, 2009


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