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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MJEggertson" data-source="post: 613875" data-attributes="member: 845">I'm a chemist, about a year and a half from getting my PhD.How busy are you going to be? It all depends. You get out of grad school what you put into grad school, and for the most part, you make your own schedule. In the hard-sciences, grad school is more like a job since they pay you a salary and usually waive your tuition. You put as many hours in as you wish, at times it demands a fair bit of attention, others not so much. As for time relative to an undergrad degree, I'd say less. Grad work is very much a 'leave the office at the office' situation, at least in the sciences. I purposely never think about research at home. But that's not so say I don't have the occasional 12-16 work hour days. You will have assignments from classes for the first year or two, but the class load is minimal relative to undergrad, since you'll likely be teaching as well.I guess what I'm trying to say is you should make as much time as you need. Some people work 80+ hours a week. Good for them, if they want to and enjoy doing it, all the power to them. Myself I don't do it, I would go insane. I don't want to be working hours like that for the rest of my life, so I refuse to work them now (work-load is one of the main reasons I never went into medicine). I have enough time to do a few programming projects on the side, and to relax some.Advantages depend largely on your discipline, and more specifically your goals. Best find out from people in the field you're going into.A thesis is a contribution to the body of research. I don't know too many masters students, but as far as I know, the only difference to a doctorate is the scope of the research. A master's dissertation will typically involve a smaller or less-involved project, leading to a smaller thesis if one is done. What the thesis contains, is the same regardless of degree. As for thesis versus non-thesis...I don't know. I never looked into getting an MS.</blockquote>

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