| I'm in a similar boat. I have a bachelors in computer science, 13 years in industry, and I'm fascinated by biology. The other comments are very good, so I'll add things I didn't see mentioned: * In my opinion, you have to get beyond the wow factor and figure out what you want to work on and why, rather than the how (e.g. CRISPR). I spent half a year researching this and my result was an interest in heart disease [1]. * Credentialism in biology is high, as mentioned. I'm currently in an M.S. in General Biology program. I was able to get my work to shift me to part time (20 hours/week) and I found a non-thesis M.S. program which is geared towards part time professionals (a rare program format) which is perfect for me. However, another comment mentioned biochemistry rather than general biology and there is some merit to that point, although I've appreciated the broader perspective of a general program. * If you take the Biology credential path of M.S. or PhD, unless you go the Bioinformatics route, you'll likely need to take the GRE Biology specialty test, which was quite difficult for me with almost no biology background. It took me about 6 months to teach myself [2]. I liked the textbook "Campbell Biology" by Urry et al. as well as others, although I find the lack of citations in textbooks really annoying for the way I learn (following rabbit holes). * Personally, I'm trying to avoid the bioinformatics route because I don't want to just be a tool of some other scientist, but I want to be a scientist myself. This is a hard path and there is some merit to others' comments about joining a biotech startup as a programmer and then transitioning to deeper biology. * In my networking, I see a lot of people going the other way: from biology to computer/data science. Anecdotally, this seems to be largely due to points others raised: lower salary, a glut of PhDs, slow growth and conservatism of the field due to regulation, etc. I don't know where I'll end up exactly, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the ride and I think you should scratch your itch if you can. Feel free to email me (email in profile) with questions. [1] https://github.com/freeradical13/ValueBasedPrioritization/ra... [2] https://freeradical13.github.io/ |