<p>Has anyone earned admission into a PhD program at any college without a Master's degree? Also, did you get a tuition waiver and/or stipend? Do you have any advice on how I can get accepted. What are some steps you did? Thank you.</p>
<p>I did - I was admitted into a PhD program at Columbia, with a tuition waiver and a stipend, directly from my undergrad.</p>
<p>The difficulty of doing this really depends on you and the individual program. I had 2 years of research experience when I applied, great grades in my major, strong recommendation letters from advisors (two of whom I had done research with) and a very clear idea of what I wanted to do, both research-wise and career-wise. I also applied to a program that was a good fit for me, research-wise - there were more than 2-3 people who could conceivably supervise me in the kind of research I was interested in.</p>
<p>Also, it just depends on your field. In certain fields most doctoral programs require a master’s (like education or epidemiology), and other fields basically strongly recommend most applicants have a master’s before entering (public health or English lit). In other fields it’s actually quite common for people to come straight from undergrad (psychology or pure math). So you have to find out about the norms of your field.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for all your help. 
Greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>I was admitted directly to the PhD path of a number of engineering programs with full support. I think it’s mostly a function of your field as to what kind of educational background they expect. In the sciences and engineering a BS is generally all that’s expected (along with already having done some research and graduate coursework in undergrad).</p>
<p>^ I don’t think that graduate coursework is necessarily expected of undergrads applying for PhD programs in most fields, is it?</p>
<p>I think that’s also a bit field dependent. Some programs have a lot more freedom with electives and such within your major, so you’re much more likely to be able to take a grad class or two prior to starting grad school. For example, most of my senior level electives were cross-listed with a graduate student version.</p>
<p>I was accepted into 2 funded PhD programs straight out of undergrad, although I wound up declining both and waiting until I had my masters anyway. I had strong grades and GREs, a little bit of research experience (I had not thought about grad school until my last year!), good letters (I think), and good matches with multiple professors in the departments in question.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that there is no one way, and that trends vary wildly between schools and fields - some disciplines may really expect the masters or want 2-3 years of research experience, some departments may prefer to get you before a masters degree.</p>