Should You Start A PhD? (Decision-making Quiz & Tool)

Should you start a PhD quiz

Results

You Might Want To Not Start A PhD

You scored low on the scale to start a PhD program. Your score was at the 25% lowest percentile. You have scored low on the factors that many people believe matter to whether you should start a doctoral program. You might want to consider not starting a PhD program, but always ask and talk about this with others. This is a discussion and thought-invoking tool.

Should You Start A PhD?

51 out of 85
This scale is about whether you should start a PhD. Indicating high on this starting a PhD scale suggests that you might want to consider starting a PhD in the future, based on your own assessment of your desires.

This scale is based on crowd-sourced items from the R3ciprocity Community. It depicts the resources, opportunity costs, and traits that may be required to start a PhD program.

This scale has not been validated. Scoring high does not mean you should start a PhD, but just that you believe you have may want to start a doctoral program in the future.

Most people fall in the midrange of the starting a PhD scale.

This is a online quiz to help you decide whether you should start a PhD. Beginning a doctoral journey is always a challenge, and there are few resources available to help you make this decision. Most of the resources are either people that are really upset with their PhD journey (it is really tough), or marketing speak from various universities that have incentive to persuade you to their program.

I created the R3ciprocity project to solve this problem, and to selfishly scratch my own itch. I wanted to create a software / movement that was nice to others. Also, if you so choose to pursue a PhD, I wanted you to have full information, but for those that have full information, perhaps my own institution (and me) might be of top of mind. Of course, my goal is to help you, no matter who you are. Look me up if you are interested. Enjoy!

Purpose:

Anyway, in July 2020, I polled the R3ciprocity community on YouTube on what are the primary factors for starting a PhD. This community is primarily based on PhDs, professors, and potential PhDs. (If you want to help validate any of these measures, and want to conduct experiments, let me know).

Privacy and Legal Stuff:
That being said, this is not based on research, and is only for fun only. Everything on the R3ciprocity community that aids research will be fully-vetted by Institutional Review Boards, and Ethics Board; and you will have consent.

At this moment, this is just for fun. By clicking and proceeding with the online survey, you realize and give consent that this is just for fun, and will not be used for research purposes, and this information will not be sold to third-parties.

Method:
This is based on a simple average of your responses. The items are based on 180 responses to various questions on the YouTube community all related to the question of “what are the primary factors for starting a PhD.” I selected the top 3 items from each question to form this measure.

Enjoy! And, I hope you learn something about yourself by taking the quiz.

Recent Content