After college you may decide you’re not finished with your formal education. In neuroscience, the most common next educational step is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy, or PhD. The PhD is the highest degree you can obtain in neuroscience, and it’s a pretty special thing. If you have earned your doctorate degree in neuroscience, it means you’re one of the people helping to generate our ever-expansive understanding of how the brain and nervous system works.
First, let’s be clear —getting a PhD in neuroscience isn’t the only way to learn about the brain. You could go to the library and take out every book related to neuroscience. You could take online courses in neuroscience or, with some money, you could attend classes at your nearest university.
Likewise, entering a PhD program is not the only way to do neuroscience research. Many companies and universities hire college graduates for research technician jobs without a PhD. Depending on the company you work for, you may be able to advance pretty far without a doctorate degree.
A PhD in neuroscience gives you more than just facts or research experience, though. When it’s done right, you learn a whole array of cognitive and experimental process skills. You’ll learn how to assess information, develop arguments, and think critically about work in your field. You’ll also gain know-how about techniques used to conduct your research — anything from loading a bunch of data into your analysis pipeline or swiftly picking up a pipette with one hand and filling one hundred mini tubes with ridiculously small amounts of highly valuable liquid.
These may or may not be skills that are worth your precious time. So the question is: should you spend the next chapter of your life in an intense research program?
It will open doors to different careers and higher (paying) positions
There are certain jobs that require a PhD. If you’d like to be a project manager at a pharmaceutical company, for example, you’ll likely need a PhD. If you want to run a lab or teach at a university, you’ll also need a PhD (and very likely postdoctoral research experience). In other cases, a PhD may earn you higher pay, but it may not be necessary. For instance, you can be a consultant without a PhD, but it does give you an advantage. We’ll talk about more of these types of careers and the importance of a PhD for them in part 4.
You will hopefully gain self-confidence and project management skills
When you work on your PhD, you’ll primarily be working alone, making your own decisions, and grappling with the outcomes of your work. This is the main factor that separates being a doctoral student from being a technician in a lab. In an ideal scenario, you also have a supportive mentor and lab mates, though this isn’t guaranteed. It’ll be lonely at times, but here’s the upside: You’ll have gained experience working on a significant project that is all yours. For many folks, that can be a huge confidence booster, and it absolutely should be. The ability to lead your own project, plan experiments, and mentor others are also important skills that extend beyond research in academia. These skills, collectively called project management skills are very attractive in many different types of careers.
You will get five years of intense research experience
A small portion of the world’s population can say that they’ve worked in a lab at all, better yet for 5.5 years on their own, independent project. This experience will give you insight into the process of science and, when done right, expose you to valuable research skills for the bench and beyond. You’ll likely gain some technical skills, sure, but you’ll also learn how to design experiments and think critically about data and outcomes. As a doctoral student, you’re tasked with collecting the data as well as making sense of it.
To learn about the brain
I wouldn’t advise spending a sizable chunk of your life working on your PhD because you want to learn. First off, PhD tracks don’t usually have that much coursework. Most of the learning you’ll do is on your own, by either reading papers or attending research talks. You could essentially do the same via online resources or open talks at your local university without the opportunity cost of a PhD program. However, working toward your PhD does give you a reason for learning and a focus on what to learn, and both of those can be very helpful.
For the money
There’s a chorus of professors somewhere maniacally laughing about this subtitle. Completing a PhD doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make more money; how much money you make largely depends on your career path.
Across fields, people with PhDs do make more money than people with bachelor’s or master’s degrees, but this doesn’t take into account what those people with PhDs could have done instead.1 The median salary for someone with a PhD in a science field is about $104,000.2 This is definitely a nice salary, but if making as much money as possible is your goal in life, you can probably do better than that. There are plenty of career paths (pharmacy, consulting) that don’t require a PhD, and they pay more than many career paths in academia.3
To help people
In the long run, both clinical and basic neuroscience research have an impact on humanity—I firmly believe that. But if you’re the kind of person who wants to feel like they’re doing good on a daily basis, then research isn’t the career for you. Researchers will often work on a project for many months or even years without much impactful data until one day they finally get interesting results with interesting implications for society. The gains in search are long-term and the impacts on human health and society are rarely immediate. You will occasionally talk to a stranger who will commend you on your contributions to society, though. And that’s rather nice.
In my opinion, it really boils down to two reasons why you should get a PhD:
Reason #1: You’re positive you need a PhD to get to the next step in your career. This means you should ask yourself: Which of my possible career paths require (or strongly recommend) a PhD?
Reason #2: You’ll just really, really love five or more years of research and the value that will bring to your life. It’s entirely possible you’re ready to spend the next four to seven years in an intense research program and that you’ll thrive in it, even if you’re not certain it’s necessary for your next chapter in life. But check in with yourself first: Is this the right time in your life for this step?
If neither of these are true, consider working in a lab for a year or two to test the waters. One of the best ways to do this is through a formal postbaccalaureate program or by looking for technician positions. The National Institutes of Health runs a large program for recent college graduates, and there are also plenty of laboratories that hire recent graduates with minimal research experience.4
Related to point two above, there’s another thing we should talk about before you jump in.
Anyone can wear the mask. You could wear the mask. If you didn’t know that before, I hope you do now.
—Miles Morales, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
A PhD is hard but in a very different way than completing a college degree. The most difficult parts aren’t necessarily memorizing content or taking exams—in most neuroscience PhD programs, the classwork is minimal and takes second fiddle to your research.5 Rather, finishing a PhD is difficult because it is very emotionally and psychologically demanding. You might experience irregular hours in the lab, challenging research advisors, and uncertain outcomes for life after you’re done.
In recent years, the hard truth about how hard the PhD process is has come to light. The combination of these factors causes about one-third of graduate students, especially at-risk populations, to spiral into depression and/or anxiety.6
As a PhD student, you’re trained to criticize everything, from your own experiments to those done by other folks. Being a good scientist means having a critical eye for weaknesses in experimental designs and interpretations. However, it is important to make sure you’re not constantly turning this critical eye toward your own life in a detrimental way. Experiments are almost never perfect, people are complicated, and relationships are hard. If you start seeing each of these things with the same skeptical lens of a scientist, you’ll find fault in everything. Personally, I’ve found that practicing some mindfulness (via yoga and meditation) as well as daily gratitude can be a really good way to combat these critical cycles.
Many PhD students also struggle with imposter syndrome, or a sincere feeling like they do not belong where they are, or that their success is all fake.7 It doesn’t help that there isn’t usually a ton of positive feedback while you’re doing research—you’ll fail many more times than you will succeed. As a student, it can help to build a support group with your lab mates or other folks in your program. Spend some time giving each other positive feedback about your projects and progress in the lab. Talk about uncertainties you feel about your research or about your next steps. Taking these thoughts out of your own brain and into a conversation with others can be really therapeutic.
Statistically speaking, graduate school is also likely to be the time in your life when you’re figuring out who you are, which is an emotional rollercoaster in itself. If you’re entering graduate school after college, it may be your first time living on your own away from parents or your first time really controlling your schedule. Each of these factors can make this a pivotal and emotionally demanding moment in your life. You may also meet someone you really like during these years of your life, and somehow, you’ll need to balance this all.
So, this all brings us back to reason #2 above: don’t dive in before you feel ready to take on a few challenging years. And if you need help along the way, that’s just because you’re human. We’ll talk more about how to manage that in chapter 6.
If you’re feeling convinced that a neuroscience PhD is for you, let’s talk about how that might look.