<p>So how grad school work with regards to the degrees given (timeline, etc.)? When does a PhD candidate receive the Masters?</p>
<p>One of my professors said that basically they give someone a Masters if they couldn't make it to the Ph.D.</p>
<p>Can someone elaborate?</p>
<p>In most programs, it's possible to receive a Masters around the time you pass qualifying exams, which is typically 1-2 years into the program. There are usually a few requirements for the Masters that don't overlap with the requirements for earning your Ph.D. A lot of people choose to do that extra work, so that they at least have something if they wind up dropping out of the Ph.D. program for any reason. However, there's technically no need to earn a Masters on the way to earning a doctorate. Some people consider it a waste of time.</p>
<p>What your professor probably means is that if someone needs to drop out of the doctoral program, they can quickly meet the additional requirements for a Masters degree, and so they don't walk away empty-handed.</p>
<p>Your professor is probably also trying to tell you that in biology, very few schools offer an M.S. as a terminal degree. In biology, having an M.S. doesn't help you out much compared to having a B.S., so don't worry about when you'll receive the M.S. - you'll need to keep going anyway! (Whereas in engineering, terminal Masters programs are very common because a few years' extra preparation is helpful for engineering work in industry.)</p>
<p>And just to clarify, in a typical biology PhD program, students will never receive a master's degree.</p>
<p>And in case anybody's interested in the timeline, a typical biology PhD program goes something like this:
Year 1: Rotate through various labs, take classes
Year 2: Choose a thesis lab, take fewer or no classes, write and defend qualifying exam
Year 3-infinity: Research on thesis</p>
<p>"Year 3-infinity: Research on thesis"
:-D</p>
<p>Specifically, what kinds of courses do you take? This will vary from institution to institution, but what were the ones you took? Are they pretty much just like undergraduate classes with exams-- except smaller class size, etc?</p>
<p>This is just for curiosity, but are you given grades or some kind of marking system (especially if classes are much less important than the lab work)?</p>
<p>Thanks to anyone who can answer</p>
<p>My program suggests that students take three core courses during their first year: genetics, molecular biology, cell biology. In addition, students are required to take a course on reading the scientific literature that involves discussion in small groups. After we've finished those courses, we're required to take four more, and people generally take small reading courses focused on a particular topic. (I'm taking one now on neurodegenerative disease, and I took one last semester on stem cells.)</p>
<p>My graduate courses are entirely indistinguishable from my undergrad courses, but many of my undergrad courses were cross-listed with grad courses anyway, so YMMV.</p>
<p>In my program, some classes are graded, and others are pass/fail. Even though some are graded, the actual grades matter very little.</p>
<p>Based on what I hear from friends in grad school (not necessarily in biology), there are two main kinds of programs: quals and no quals. If a department doesn't have qualifying exams, they might require you to take a bunch of extra-rigorous courses and get a certain GPA in them. That way, they're still sure that you know all of the material. In programs that do have quals, the courses tend to be more like undergrad courses (lower workload, kind grading, some overlap in material), but Woe Be To He that doesn't retain every nugget of information come qualifiers. So in the first case, you bust your ass all year and you qualify automatically, and in the second, your courses are easier but you had better prepare yourself for the qualifying exam.</p>
<p>My pharmacology program does this:</p>
<p>Year 1 (pass mini oral exam and classes) - MA
Year 2 (pass qualifying exam and classes) - MS
Year 6-7 (pass dissertation defense) - PhD</p>
<p>sadly, i came in with an MS already so it looks like the first two years don't come with any pats-on-the-back.</p>