Does it make sense to pursue two master's degrees? Quick background: I am currently pursuing two master's degrees, &quot;Data Engineering and Analytics&quot; from TU Munich and &quot;Computer Linguistics&quot; from LMU Munich. I am in my second semester and plan to finish both in 2 1/2 years. The time frame and work load seems reasonable as of now, I am having fun with it and don't work crazy times. Both degrees deal with quite different topics, though they might seem similar. My master's at TUM is very mathy and proof-based. The other master's is rather practical. For the first Master's I'm expecting a 1.7+- and for the second a 1.3+-.
My motivation to do this is mainly based on my wish to pursue a PhD: 1. LMU is very good in (deep) NLP (&lt;- broad description of my research interest) and one of the Prof's work is very interesting, hence I am currently looking for touch points. 2. I personally don't think the Computer Linguistics programm is super sophisticated, the stuff we do is rather shallow so I think knowledge-wise it's not such a huge gain (I consider my TUM master's my &quot;main&quot; work). Here is my question: 3. I want to distinguish myself. I am looking for an internationally renowned Uni for my next step so I am assuming I have high competition. Under these circumstances could you confirm / give your view if pursuing two degrees is a good idea? Should I channel my resources to do something different (e.g. look for actual research experience, publications, etc.), I don't know many people in these fields yet, the Bachelor's programmes in Germany are quite anonymous.
I'd say, having two masters degrees could definitely help you if you consider the 2nd one as a back-up plan (in terms of research fields/directions) if you cannot find a good PhD position in the field relevant for your 1st (main) one. It should, of course, depend on the availability, so ideally, there should be higher competition in the field of the &quot;main&quot; one, and not vice versa.
If you already know that you only want to continue in the field of your &quot;main&quot; one, and see the 2nd as an additional line on your cv, I doubt it is going to help you much, maybe unless your 2nd one is more math-heavy than the 1st one (which is not the case, as I assume from your question). In that regard, considering your 2nd masters direction a back-up plan could be quite smart.
Yet, if your 1st one is more fundamental and your 2nd is more applied, one way I can think of how your 2nd masters could help you obtain a PhD position in the field of the 1st one is: if during your 2nd masters, you learned a specific technique, or software etc, which is highly relevant for the PhD project you are aiming at. There is always a bit of luck involved though, unless you make a thorough analysis of the PhD positions market a few years ahead.