Why Master’s? When I began contemplating my next steps in my career, one crucial question loomed over me: Should I pursue another Master’s degree? At the time, I had recently transitioned to a new job at American Express, which offered better earnings, an amazing work culture, and a role that aligned with my aspirations. Despite these positive aspects, there was a lingering feeling of emptiness.
I realized that what was truly missing from my life was the joy of continuous learning and the college experience. Throughout the year, I had been considering applying for a Master’s degree, and that became my main motivator. I knew deep down that I wanted to add one more Master’s degree to my academic journey before bidding farewell to formal education. This aspiration had been a dream since childhood, inspired by my cousins who pursued their Master’s degrees in the US.
The desire to quench my thirst for knowledge and embrace the stimulating college environment were the driving forces behind my decision to explore further education opportunities, enhancing my career aspirations.
Curious about my friend’s perspective, I decided to ask them what motivated their decision to pursue a Master’s degree?
- With more than 5 years of experience in the analytics industry, I have made significant strides, but I recognise that there is still much to learn before I can consider myself an expert in this field. Hence, the masters!
- I wanted to gain analytical skills so I can club it with my marketing experience which will help in getting better roles and better pay as well. Also, I will have diverse options to choose a career stream.
- I was working on a project where we analysed customer data to produce reports and dashboards for clients to optimize resource allocation and team productivity. After writing about millions of lines of code, I was like — there’s gotta be a better way to do this! That’s when I came across data analysis tools and decided to look for courses which could help me get introduced to the right tools and techniques to EFFICIENTLY work with data!
- I chose to do my master’s mainly because it made sense for me to go back to school both professionally and personally. Additionally, it covered the subject areas that I am passionate about.
- My role involved dealing with team working on SaaS Analytics and I knew I couldn’t lead people who worked on data modelling and ML without getting my hands dirty as well. I’m the type of person who learns technical tools best in an environment of formalized learning. So a master’s was the most natural choice :)
In my opinion I believe these are the major reasons you can choose to do a Master’s:
- You’ve Hit a Career Ceiling
- You Need to Make More Money
- You Need a Career Switch
- You Need More Training to Do Your Job
- You Want More Credibility and Authority
- You Want to become a SME on a particular field of Interest
- You Like Learning and Want That One Last College Experience
Why Now? While people obviously pursue Master’s at different phases of their lives and there is No One Size All formula for this. But I do personally feel that certain programs will have be better suited at certain phases of your life. For Eg: MIM is a program that is most certainly well suited for people with less work years of experience, beyond that it adds little to no value to you career trajectory.
I was very clear that I want to do this program only now — and if I wait for a year I would probably decide to wait and just go for a MBA later on. While theMSBA accommodates individuals at various career stages, I specifically chose it now due to its unique advantages for my career growth and interests which I will talk about in a later article.
There are obvious advantages and disadvantages with pursuing Master’s right after college v/s pursuing it with a few more years of experience. For me waiting for 2 years helped me chose a more appropriate program — More on this in a later article, where I explain Which Master’s and Why?
Whatever be the motivation of pursuing your Master’s, the timing decision involves weighing deeply personal and unique factors. Weigh the benefits of each option against your individual priorities, like career, education, and family.
Hopefully this article helps you take that small step towards giving a thought to if Master’s is for you or not?
Cheers,
Meghavi