Should I do a PhD?
I'm currently a 17-year old doing a Bachelor of Science majoring in maths and a minor in stats in New Zealand. I'm in my final year of studies for my Bachelor's and will be begin studying for BSc(honours) next year (a one year postgraduate course). (Note in NZ a bachelor's degree is 3 years and the 4th year is called honours which is considered to be a postgrad course). I'm almost 100% confident that I will continue through to a master's but I'm hesitant whether I should continue to a PhD.
My current thought process is that since I'm so young, I will probably complete my PhD by the time I'm 22-24 so I might as well do a PhD anyway. However I'm a bit hesitant with whether I should go into academia or not, and if I decide to leave academia, how easy it'll be to find a job.
I want to give academia a go but I'm not sure if I'll survive in the competitiveness (especially in the field of maths) so I feel I want to have an alternative option of leaving to an industrial job. But if having a PhD doesn't give me an advantage with finding a job then I feel doing a PhD is a waste of time.
Currently, I'm thinking I want to reside in Japan so I want to do a Master's at Tokyo University or Kyoto University but considering their competitiveness (and the fact I need to pass an entrance exam) I feel the possibility of doing postgrad in Japan is quite low. My lecturer's are suggesting that I should do my PhD in the US since they have fellowships which almost guarantees any PhD student's to have funding but I'm not sure if I want to spend 5 years in the US. I'm also somewhat interested in Europe but I'm struggling to find funding from European universities.
My main three concerns about postgraduate studies are:
- Finance
- Quality of education
- Location
I would not continue with postgraduate studies if I don't get funding, and I don't think it's worth it to do a PhD in some low-tier university. I'm also hesitant about spending a long time overseas in a place I'm not too interested in (e.g 5 years in the US).
I would just like to hear advice from people on whether I should do a PhD, or any other life advice (since I'm young and pretty inexperienced).