Pros and Cons of pursuing a Masters Degree, soon after degree?
Pros
- Buy Time
If you’re not ready to enter the job market, doing a Master degree can help you to buy time. In this case, you can have one more summer to engage in various internships and further build up your resume and skill sets.
If you’re targeting roles in investment banks and you failed the recruitment season in your penultimate year, it’d be very hard for you to apply for full-time analyst positions, as most full time offers are given to summer analysts as returns. Therefore, doing a master degree could give you one more chance to re-apply summer analyst programs.
-Enhance your academic background (Target School and GPA concerns) If your degree is not from a target school or you perform poorly in school coursework, it’d be very difficult for you to pass through screening for certain programs or companies. Therefore, if you pursue a master degree from a target school, it’d be definitely helpful to pass through the initial screening.
-Be considered for more positions, such as HKMA and DBS MT programs Some companies require the MT applicants to be postgraduates. Therefore, having a Master degree would allow you to be considered for more opportunities.
-Further enhance your technical-know-how If your degree is irrelevant to the positions you are applying for, let’s say you are a social science student who would like to break into data analytics, then doing a master in analytics would equip you with the technical skills.
Cons
-Cost
A Master’s degree doesn’t come in a cheap price. The average tuition Master’s can range between $150,000 and $500,000. The cost can vary wildly from university to course to programme. There are also living costs to consider, if you move to a new environment especially.
-Uncertainty about the Usefulness of the Master Program As a degree graduate, you may not be 100% certain about the career you want to pursue. Therefore, doing a Master degree at such an early stage of your career may not be helpful for career development.
-No excuse for further studies in the future Normally we only pursue one master degree. If you already use this quota after your degree studies, after some years of working full-time, you don’t have this excuse to take a break from your career.
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