Board 8 > attn masaomihouzuki

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@MasaomiHouzuki

hey did you think grad school was harder, easier, or about the same as undergrad? specifically I'm thinking about the amount of time and effort needed to stay on top of things. level of difficulty of the material is also a factor, but I care less about that.
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you won't fool my bot here!
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I have experience with this topic so I'll chime in

Literally every grad course I took had either 2-3 papers with long-term due dates (but no overlap) or a semester-long group project, but not both. Traditional homework was still a thing in some courses, but not many. Combine that with the fact that I was taking two less couses per semester (9 hours is full time for grad), and the overall workload was about the same, with the potential to explode as due dates approached if you procrastinated. On a single-course basis, it was more work, but it balanced out.

(I didn't think that the coursework was significantly more difficult either, but I was very rarely challenged in my undergrad and very few people I spoke with agreed with me on that front so you may have a different experience)
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thanks reg but I'm more specifically looking for an answer from one specific person
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There's basically two phases to (physics) graduate school, I only got through the first and had some taste of the second.

The first phase was basically just "undergrad, but harder because you also had to teach+grade and had to take this balls hard exam in a year". This will probably vary for whatever school-major pairing you can think of, but the common thread is to "do the bare minimum for classes to stay in the program", because the grades are not important and you should be primarily taking classes that are useful for research or passing whatever qualification exams your school has (if there are any). Personally speaking I'd rate this as actually about equal to undergrad because while you oftentimes have less support (e.g. profs teaching usually don't need your approval to get tenure, TAs are more overworked etc.) and more obligations, but you're still in the same mode of undergrad studying.

The second phase is "you have essentially an infinite amount of time to conduct research" which, yeah there's been a ton of stuff written about this by other phd students about how soul draining this can be if you don't have the right circumstances. The difficulty of this phase is almost entirely dictated by how devoted you are to your subject (I'd say you'd have to be in the top 1-2% of devotion among grad students to have an easy time, and yes that's literal) and who you pick as your PI. I think I picked a pretty good PI but had a really hard time finding stuff to do since I was thinking about going into industry near the tail end of this phase.

Can't really say much if you want to write a thesis for a phd. The school I went to pretty much just rewards a masters to anyone who finishes the first year of graduate school, which I think is pretty forgiving if you ignore the fact that the first year of physics grad school is the most grueling due to adjustment.

Overall, I don't think much of the specifics are relevant unless you go to a similar school in the same major as I did, but that the research phase being harder and extremely demotivating seems to be a universal among all grad students I've talked to.

ah, cool. thanks for the perspective!

I've heard from a lot of my internet friends that grad school is "easy" but basically none of them were science students so I wasn't sure how relevant their opinion was. as for the people I know in real life most of them are pretty incompetent so once again it's hard to guess what their opinion even means. I've had people tell me that really easy classes were hard. some of the undergrad students doing research have admitted to me that they can't even explain what they are researching. I know plenty who can score well on tests but can't even discuss basic scientific concepts or show any mastery of really any subject matters aside from rote memorization. and the remainder are the ones who can't even score well on tests. aside from a few rare exceptions, anyway. all of the smart and capable ones I knew finished last year. they're gone and I can't ask them anymore, whoops.

there's basically three choices for the masters program here. research focused, thesis focused, and one where you pair up with industry to do application based projects. I have a feeling the last one is really just me taking classes and being used as cheap skilled labor, though. I think my biggest two hurdles on making a decision are that I don't have a particular research subject I care that much about AND I feel like I don't want to start a program that's going to stifle my free time. if I did do something it would be research based, though. we also have two computational chemists here so I could potentially do something weird like choose a research based masters program where I don't do any real research and it's all theoretical.
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I will just briefly say that I am currently in a Physics PhD program (3rd year), and almost literally everything in Masaomi's post matches my own impressions/experiences.
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good to know. I've been working on a degree part time for a while now so basically my main concern is that if the level of effort and time needed to dedicate to school increases by a lot that I might not be able to handle it. hell, even if it stays the same I'm really at the point where I feel burned out already.
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