When I started out, I really thought that I'd pursue a career as a scientist/academic, but I've since read plenty of articles (one example among many: http://www.economist.com/node/17723223) about how abysmal the academic market is. I'm also aware that in cogNuro and neuroscience, even the best people (with very few exceptions) post-doc for 4-5 years.

So, I'm at a strange stage. 1) I've been accepted to a top 10 program (private midwestern university) where I'd be working with a well established and very active advisor. 2) Yet, I'm fairly certain that I no longer want to be an academic. Not only do I think my chances are slim of landing a decent job, even attempting to go the academic route would put me at 40ish before my first job.

My questions: -Is there any other reason for me to accept? -Would the PhD have any value outside of being intellectually very rewarding (as one professor friend of mine said "a 6 year adventure")? -Are there any applied routes that I could go? I do know that there are applications of this technology as "lie detection" and helping people with locked in syndrome, but it seems that these aren't nearly mature enough to produce jobs for PhDs. Of course, doing machine learning would probably be applicable in the data analytics world, but if I'm just going to go back to my old industry, I wonder if I'd be better off doing a masters in stats, cs, etc.

I ask these because I'm really trying to find out if there's anything that I'm missing. I just want to know if anyone is aware of some route that I don't see that would make this valuable.

If not, I may have to make the sad decision to turn down an offer to do some really cutting-edge research.