I only go to school part-time since going to school full-time is too stressful for me. I have my own reasons as to why it’s too stressful. I am still two years away from completing my undergrad, but I am keeping grad school out there as an option. I am just curious if you are allowed to attend graduate school part-time like you are with undergrad.
Yes you can. I know several that have done both degrees part time while working full time (engineering). The masters is easy, the Ph.D is difficult due to the difficulty meeting with the thesis advisor and the overall number of credits.
It depends.
For thesis-based science degrees, it’s very rare. Course requirements are very slim (something like 6-12 courses for the whole degree). The thesis is based on the new research that you’re doing, so it’s essentially a full-time job. The only ‘part-time’ MS/PhDs I’ve heard of for experimental sciences were industry collaborations. The students were working in a R&D job in a company that had some kind of relationship with the university (ie. the group leader was an adjunct prof. at the university or there’s a technology development agreement between the company and a prof at the university). For those students, the research they do for the company (or the non-confidential bits of the research) are written up as their thesis.
Course-based Masters degrees tend to be more flexible.
The problem with the PhD is that they aren’t going to fund you for twice as long (and you’d be looking at around 10 years, too). There are plenty of part time MBA programs.
There are a ton of Masters degrees you can do part-time even academic ones with thesis. And people take time off from their PhDs all the time to have babies, work, travel. It depends on what you want to study and at what level of intensity, how it’s being funded, etc. But definitely possible.
A more fundamental question you should consider is: if you find full-time undergraduate studies to be too stressful, how would you expect to not will under the extra pressure of a graduate program?
There are lots of part-time master’s degrees, some even designed explicitly for working professionals.
There are not many part-time PhDs, and I wouldn’t recommend doing a PhD part-time.