Comment by neilwilson
6 years ago
An MIT Phd opens many doors in many areas and will do throughout your life. Trust me, you won’t always be young and you won’t always be interested in the same thing.
It shouldn’t be, but it is way more difficult to get high level professional qualifications when you’re older. The expectation that reaearch students are young is quite embedded.
How much is expectations vs the reality of life circumstances? I’m mid-40s and almost surely slightly slower in raw intellect than I was 20 years ago, but being married with two young kids is much more of a limitation on my ability to earn a PhD or even MBA than any inate degradation.