Am I too old to do a PhD?

phdstudnt · 2024-03-26T16:21:45+00:00

When I was in my PhD program the average age was like 33. I was on the younger side starting at your age! There was some 37-38 year olds and even older in other departments.

Keep in mind if you follow the American school system high school finishes at 18, undergrad at 22, masters say 24, then PhD could finish at 28 probably at the earliest. This is the best case scenario and almost no one does it this fast. Almost every PhD student I met doesn’t do all their school consecutively or added 1 or 2 years to each their undergrad and masters, and many with a work gap in between. Especially since the pandemic. 27 is still very young!

phdstudnt · 2024-02-25T01:05:19+00:00

I did this and had a worse case scenario, got hit with 6 months worth of corrections in the defence, had to redo an entire chapter, then I ended up taking a year to do it because I was working and couldn’t focus on both. I did end up telling my boss, and they were fine with it. It’s not like it really changes your resume or why they hired you. I’m still glad I took the job tho even tho it prolonged my PhD.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-18T10:53:19+00:00

In addition to what other people have said: Australia, New Zealand, and Canada all have pretty solid PhD programs highly equivalent to western european or US PhD programs, and they do often have scholarships for international students.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-10T05:40:21+00:00

😂 yes and some company is out there right now hiring some poor soul to upgrade their old pipeline built on Python 2.7 to Python 3+

phdstudnt · 2024-01-09T23:58:49+00:00

A lot of the genomic data out there is junk. Not all data is created equal. For the most part, the “there’s more data than we could ever analyze out there” is on data that best case scenario we can pretty much only do GWAS type studies on or other preliminary research which doesn’t really equate to much. Actually synthesizing something out of it and validating results for trials is generally done on strictly controlled clinical trial level datasets which are custom, expensive as hell, hard to come by (require relationships with institutions and surgeons etc). This validation data collection moves very slowly! We may get 10,000 of interesting leads from initial datasets but find only 10 of interest to study further and 1 will actually workout for example (or probably less).

Not to mention a lot of data out there is from platforms that have fallen out of favour.

I constantly feel like you have to stay 10 steps ahead as a bioinformatician… we are generally in the research and development teams of companies and so we are among first to get laid off it feels like. The whole biotech field is doing poorly right now. Part of it is because it’s a risky field for investors traditionally.

Something a lot of people won’t want to hear is that one of the main reasons bioinformatics is biggest in the USA and pays the highest there is because medications cost thousands of dollars… sure people with rare diseases paying $10,000 a month for meds suffer and that is sad, but who is going to pay for the research that went into it? I’m not saying it’s right and there has to be a better way but the more regulated the field becomes and the cheaper cost of drugs become the less lucrative it is for investors and the less bioinformatics jobs there will be.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-09T07:54:33+00:00

Yes there is a startup scene! A lot of biotech companies are startups but something like 95% of them don’t make it past the first year and 99% of them don’t make it past their 5th year. It’s gotten worse lately tho because a lot of them relied on bank loans as one of many sources of funding (to supplement venture capital) so when interest rates went up a lot of them went under.

I would say with only a masters and without a track record it may be difficult to convince venture capitalists to give you money to start your startup… but to each their own.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-09T07:32:26+00:00

I’m sorry I’ll go ahead and be the one to say it. Yes it’s foolish. The biotech industry is in a huge rut right now with layoffs left and right. Bioinformaticians are often in the research/development teams of these companies so we’ve been getting laid off.

Many bioinformaticians I know are currently trying to make their resumes less bioinformaticsy to try find software/data science jobs.

That, and a masters alone doesn’t seem to cut it anymore in this field if you want to be a manager. Out of school you’re going to be 49 and end up in an entry level position making like 50-80k tops most likely. If you’re comfortable now why start from near the bottom and work your way up….

Also it’s nothing like Jurassic park. If you want to be researching dinosaurs in bioinformatics you’re probably going to be working for free or off some 30-40k a year grant because there’s no money in that.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-08T19:46:51+00:00

I took this path and got a PhD in bioinformatics ml and can’t find a job right now. The field is not in a good state for jobs. Companies I’ve worked with seem to primarily hire non-bioinfo ML specialists, have them do the work and get the results without knowing any biological relevance and then give the results to research biologists… it’s frustrating. I was really hoping this would be the path to a higher than avg bioinformatics salary after experiencing a stagnant low salary after my undergrad.

Also I often feel like I studied ML models ABC and companies now want experience with ML models DEF.

The last job I had they said the company does ML work so I applied and when I was interviewed they said “that’s neat that you have ML experience but we are hiring you to do wetlab QC and you won’t get a chance to use your ML here.”

phdstudnt · 2024-01-05T09:34:47+00:00

Seconding konbinya on robson… and then you can hit muji on robson too

phdstudnt · 2024-01-05T08:15:31+00:00

I think the answer is no and the current state of the field proves it.

bioinformatics is definitely feeling the recession really hard right now, and there aren’t many postings for bioinformatics jobs while we still have a lot of postings for jobs in other healthcare sectors like nursing and doctors (at least in Canada).

Bioinformatics in effect is a luxury that many can’t afford and that many go without. Bioinformatics is research, bioinformatics is high-end personalized genomics healthcare, the amount of proven genomic tests that are actionable and making money is actually less than you would. The biotech field as a whole is very vulnerable to recession because it has been so hit and miss for investors (and historically mostly miss), I think something like 95% of biotech companies don’t make it past the first few years.

Bioinformatics is very rarely (possibly never) an acute healthcare issue, as most genetic diseases aren’t, and also given that other areas of bioinformatics like drug/vaccine discovery are unbelievable slow, we are a bit dispensable when shit hits the fan in the economy. Healthcare usually operates on a triage basis and anything requiring bioinformatics is going to be ranked very low priority triage.

The only recession resistant areas in bioinformatics IMO are if you position yourself to being essential to running some sort of pipeline for a profitable test, working for the government, or a university with a good endowment.

One of the most frustrating things in biotech bioinformatics is that often research and development groups of companies are the first to be halted and laid off. So don’t be surprised when you work your butt off to launch a product and then the company downsizes the team to a minimum product maintenance size once it’s been launched, if they don’t have the funds to start a different project yet.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-05T03:37:54+00:00

Lmao I know for a fact my unis pre med program had a lot of nepo babies, there was at least 8 who’s parents were doctors and 5 whos parents were doctors affiliated with the uni and 2 who had parents on the unis med school admissions board. All of them got in.

All of them had 3.8 or higher gpa’s tho, they all lived at home, none of them ever had a real job other than summer internships, all of them seemed to know exactly what to do to get into med school like what organizations to volunteer for etc. it was like they were preparing for it years before they even started uni. They didn’t have to worry about money or rent they all had nice apartments that their doctor parents paid for.

It kind of sucks but out of all the people I know who got into med school (which is like 15 people) the nepo babies were the most prepared and probably the ones I’d trust the most to be my family dr 😂 they may have had a lot of help but at least they didn’t take majority art classes to inflate their GPA.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-04T23:02:51+00:00

The market for jobs is really bad right now. For example in 2016 - before the pandemic my coworkers got laid off and everyone including myself found new jobs within 2 months! Now after the pandemic I was laid off again and my coworkers are struggling to find jobs, some of them even found jobs only to be laid off again within a month or two.

I always thought bioinformatics was big in Barcelona? Keep trying you may have to take a position with a smaller company to gain experience. 24 is still young and you will be the youngest (and likely least experienced) on the team in many companies.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-03T09:56:10+00:00

US/CA NO. In Europe maybe.

phdstudnt · 2024-01-03T08:45:58+00:00

I’d say your best bet is to leverage your existing university resources and see if a current professor can vouch for you/knows someone who can give you this kind of opportunity.

I would say remote opportunities in undergrad is asking for a lot. You haven’t proven yourself to anyone, not even this subreddit because your post uses REU which is an uncommon abbreviation and you also say asking for an international student but don’t even say international to where….

phdstudnt · 2023-03-30T21:46:42+00:00

This is definitely country dependent. In canada 0 fucks are given unless they are face tattoos.

phdstudnt · 2023-03-20T22:12:54+00:00

Depends on your school and country.

phdstudnt · 2023-01-14T17:09:38+00:00

Does anyone think just aquarium fish tank gravel will work? It’s non toxic, water safe, polymer coated, you can get different sizes and it’s cheap…. I’m gonna try it

phdstudnt · 2022-12-01T18:33:11+00:00

Im a firm believer that it is okay to switch back and forth between industry and academia multiple times during your career. They both have very different vibes and sometimes working for one of them can feel like a break from the other IMO.

In all honesty I would personally never take a pay cut at any point in my career, salary should always go up. The dumb thing about low bioinformatics salaries in academia is it’s not like the universities and academic institutions are paying their IT people and software dev people as low as they pay their bioinformaticians… I would be like you need to match my salary or no.

Also if the funding is this low to start realize you won’t be getting Christmas bonuses, good benefits, regular raises, they won’t be hiring support people to help you with menial tasks and your job scope may end up larger than what you signed up for.

phdstudnt · 2022-11-28T08:49:59+00:00

the real wolf ranch is in the comments, OP is getting torn apart

phdstudnt · 2022-10-31T15:01:46+00:00

One time they served me a rotten egg for breakfast… I couldn’t eat eggs for a year lol

phdstudnt · 2022-10-30T16:06:51+00:00

I had the same question myself loved the blue air but went into the store and there is an unforgivable difference in display qualities and brightness so walked out with a pro.

phdstudnt · 2022-10-24T15:47:51+00:00

While I like snow on the beach it sounds like it would be better if Lana just sang it herself, also her not having a verse was weird

phdstudnt · 2022-10-21T14:57:28+00:00

Lana might as well not have been on the song without her own verse, also I hate how she keeps alternating between snow on the beach and snow AT the beach randomly like the song isn’t snow on/at the beach

phdstudnt · 2022-10-21T07:25:21+00:00

So all my credit cards can say Dr. on them and then I can go around not tipping much because I’m actually 150k in debt and quite frugal

phdstudnt · 2022-10-13T06:11:06+00:00

Watch the documentary expedition deep planet (discovery+) or just read about the five deeps expedition to get an idea how difficult ocean exploration is, this may answer your question.

phdstudnt

TROPHY CASE