Grad schools

I had a good talk today with Dr. Johnson from Stats about grad schools. Incidentally, the talk happened during my civ class.. but it sounds like I didn't miss anything. Nathan says that he just pontificated the whole class.

Anyway, Dr. Johnson brought up a couple of good points. If I stick with a bioinformatics degree, it will be hard to find a faculty teaching position when I graduate. If I graduate from a biology department, I will also probably have to do a post-doc before I can get hired on anywhere.

This was really good for me to hear. I'm going to have to look into more cs-ey programs. I have always only considered applying for bioinformatics programs, and assumed that my research experience and specialized undergraduate degree would help me get my foot in the door there, but I'm not sure what advantages I will have when compared to other CS students. Especially with the economic recession and people going back to grad school, there will probably be more competition from professionals returning to get a PhD. Perhaps the computer science industry won't be so hard-hit. I haven't felt any less demand for CS graduates in industry, and the same recruiters keep coming to recruit new graduates. I guess we'll see, though.