Benjamin Todd

Weigh up your options in terms of personal fit.

Will you be good at the subject?

If you're good at the area, it's more likely you'll be able to pursue work in that area later on.

You'll enjoy it more, and you'll do the work more quickly.

Flexibility.

Does it open up lots of options, both inside and outside academia?

If you're uncertain about academia, watch out for programs that mainly help you with academic careers, for example, philosophy PhD or literature PhD.

And if you do a maths PhD, you can transfer into economics, physics, biology, computer science, and so on, but the reverse is not true.

Also, some graduate programs give you better odds of landing academic positions.

For example, more than 90% of economists can get research positions, whereas only about 50% of biology PhDs do.

Relevance to your long-term plans Does it take you towards the options you're most interested in?

Lots of people attempted to do graduate study even when it doesn't particularly help with their longer-term plans.

For instance, potential entrepreneurs attempted to do MBAs when they're not particularly helpful to entrepreneurship.

Lots of people are tempted to do a random master's degree when they're not sure what to do.

Some people consider doing a law degree when they're not confident they want to be a lawyer.

Which programs are best within a subject?

There's a huge amount of variation between schools and specific programs within a subject.

Pay attention too.

Will you get good mentorship?

Learning how to do good research is a craft that gets passed down mainly via hands-on training, so this is vital.