Except that for a 1 year master’s, the time frame would be you start your master’s in September and apply to the PhD in December. That doesn’t really give much time to develop a more competitive profile or develop stronger networking ties. That’s why if you’re using a master’s to improve your profile to make you more competitive applicant for a PhD, a traditional 2 year master’s is probably of more value.
Ok I’m going to walk my previous statement back a bit.
Is this Perimeter by any chance? If so, it is worth it. I have heard that it is one program that will absolutely increase your chances for a top 10 PhD admit. I know of one student who attended my son’s undergrad who did the program. They went on to a PhD at Princeton and is now a post-doc at Stanford. There’s also the Perimeter Start program that would allow them to start research in the summer before.
My son is also targeting Theoretical Physics graduate programs. He’s not sure he wants to do a PhD yet so he’s applying to master’s programs first. He’ll be applying to Perimeter among a few other Canadian Physics master’s programs this fall.
This is indeed the Masters program at Perimeter.
I wonder though, upon the completion of that Masters, would the graduate, assuming they’re applying in the US, then be applying for a traditional 5-year-ish PhD program that includes two more years of Master’s level classwork; or, would the Master’s from Perimeter suffice and they’d go directly into the research phase of a PhD?
I do see the advantages of a PhD that has a two-year Masters component as valuable in that it gives the student a little more time to explore their interests in physics and begin to formulate ideas around what their PhD dissertation will be about.
Course requirements for a PhD candidate aren’t generally set in stone. There’re lots of flexibilities in meeting those requirements. If a student has taken some of the required courses as an undergrad or in a master’s program, s/he may petition and receive approval for the substitutions. Some PhD candidates have met nearly all course requirements when they enter their programs so they can focus all their energy on research right away.
In fact, in many programs, the course requirements for PhD students are set individually, based on the courses the students has taken and on the subfield they are choosing.
Also, depending on the program, PhD student can start their research immediately, though this is usually in the form of literature searches to help formulate ideas and see existing gaps and potential directions.
A typical US STEM PhD is around 5.8 years, which roughly works out to be 2 years “masters” + 4 years as a PhD candidate. The student I referenced above completed their PhD at Princeton in 5 years, so it is possible that they did receive credit for their master’s courses, but I don’t know for sure. It could be instead that it just took them less time to complete their thesis.
Many (most) engineering students finish their PhDs in 5 years, without a masters.
In general, there is no general rule for “STEM”, since each field has different lengths of time for their research. For example, ecology, earth sciences, etc, in which researchers can only collect data during specific seasons, can take a lot longer than fields which do not rely on the cooperation of the natural world.
As I indicated above, my son’s area of interest is quantum physics. It appears based on the data in the link below that for physics the average is 6.2 years for 2017 / 2018 cohorts. My guess is that there is some variation between specialities and whether the candidate is on the theoretical or experimental side. Again, in my son’s case, he’s interested in theory. Potentially, that tilts the timetable in his favor since he wouldn’t be running an experiment and, by extension, isn’t “waiting for the cooperation of the natural world.” Trends in Physics PhDs | American Institute of Physics
naturally, for them, entanglement makes time no longer a constant
With those types of puns you and I would get along well…I just told him when it comes to finishing his physics PhD in 5 years not to worry, “it’s all relative.”