The thing to bear in mind is that PhD programs aren&#x27;t geared towards people who just want to work on interesting questions, get the PhD, and then leave and do something else. You&#x27;ll be immersed in a culture where all of your peers see a tenure track position as the only job worth having. No-one will take any aspirations you may have outside academia at all seriously. Unless you are very tough and independent-minded, you <i>will</i> have your perception of your own goals shifted by this.<p>(There may be some exceptions to this generalization for fields that have very close connections to industry, e.g. CS.)