I encourage students considering graduate school to start with an MS program, specifically one that requires a thesis based on original research. Your thesis research will give you experience planning and completing a complex project, a skill and credential useful well beyond academia. If you stop after the MS, you’ll probably have a wider range of job options than with either a BS or a PhD.

If you enjoy your MS research project, that’s a clue that you might enjoy a PhD program and the kinds of jobs that require a PhD. That might take another four years of school, mostly doing research rather than classes, often followed by two or more years of short-term “postdocs” before you get a long-term job. That’s a big time commitment that you might avoid if your two-year investment in the MS shows you that a research-focused career isn’t for you. These days, a “research-focused” academic career may actually be focused more on raising money and managing people, although some of us still manage to spend a lot of time in the lab or field.

Assuming you want to go to graduate school, can you afford it, financially? If you can keep your expenses down, most PhD programs provide enough support that you shouldn’t have to go further into debt. Postdocs pay more, though not necessarily enough to buy a house or start a family.

But most graduate programs focus their limited resources (such as paid Teaching Assistant positions) on PhD students, providing little or no support for MS students. This may tempt some students to sign up for a PhD, for the money, then leave early with an MS, which is often possible. I’ve argued that discrimination against MS students contributes to the over-supply of PhD’s, relative to PhD-requiring jobs, but most grad programs seem stuck in this rut.

Except, apparently, the University of Minnesota at Duluth. I just got an email claiming that their Integrated Biosciences Graduate Program fully funds MS students. I’m close enough to possible retirement that I’d hesitate to take a new PhD student, but I could probably be a coadvisor or something for someone in that program. Winters are cold there, but summers are nice.

On a related topic, I’ve had a couple of undergraduate students who have done well here (and gone on to graduate school) after transferring from a community college, saving a lot of money. Or consider a tuition-free college in Europe.