<p>I'm currently a high school senior (graduating in late June) and I will be enrolling as an undergraduate in the fall. </p>
<p>My high school record makes me an early standout at the university I will be attending (a school in the University of California system to remain nameless), especially within their physics department. I've been reading theories and toying with my own cosmological hypotheses for the last few years, and I am relatively -- certainly enough to be looking into graduate programs -- sure of my interest in the field. </p>
<p>I plan to make use of transferable AP/community college/university credits and start my studies around the end of my sophomore and beginning of my junior year. This, combined with a plan to take an accelerated and intensive course load, will allow me to take full advantage of my undergraduate career. I plan to graduate with a B.S. in both Mathematics and Physics. In addition to substantial research, it may be possible for me to complement these studies with the pursuit of a M.S. in physics within the confines of a four-year graduation plan from my undergraduate studies before seeking to enroll in a PhD program in physics following graduation.</p>
<p>I have two questions: </p>
<p>Firstly, is this a commonplace occurrence? Someone finishing their undergraduate studies early so as to complete a masters during what would have been their senior year in order to move directly into a PhD program? I would love to hear from anyone who has completed a similar plan, or knows of anyone who has.</p>
<p>Secondly, are there any general pieces of advice, warnings, or opinions regarding the path to a graduate program in physics that anyone would like to share? Do's-and-don'ts, so to speak? </p>
<p>If there is a graduate physics thread where this post or I would better be served, could someone kindly direct me there?</p>
<p>Please and thank you very much!</p>
<p>I have a few friends in other STEM fields that picked up a MS along with their BS before graduating. Generally this is only done if you plan on not pursuing a PhD. It’s very likely that whatever school you wind up going to for your PhD would require you to retake most of your classes, and you’d wind up getting a second MS degree there.</p>
<p>You’d probably be much better served spending some time every term doing research with a professor. That will impress graduate admissions committees more than a MS will.</p>
<p>please update us in four years.</p>
<p>Thank you for your help!</p>
<p>I’d imagine, then, that you would advise against attempting to finish early and apply to graduate schools after, say, three years of undergraduate work? I would be better served, it seems, by using that fourth year to engage in intensive original research, would I not?</p>
<p>Yes, I can’t see you having any advantage graduating earlier</p>
<p>you should use all 4 years at your UC and take as many Grad school classes as possible, after you have taken the most rigorous UG classes in your major. In addition you should seek out any and all opportunities do research with profs[ especially during the Summers] . That way you will have both the LORs required to earn admission to a PHD program, and will have proven you CAN do graduate school level class work . PhD admissions committees/ professors care little about how fast you earn your UG degree. They care about how ready you are to “hit the ground running” when you get to grad school.</p>
<p>I wound up graduating a semester early from undergrad which I think worked out great. If you graduate in your third year and want to go directly to grad school then you’re doing applications in the fall of your junior year, with, likely, only one solid year of grades within your major. By sticking around for the extra term I had the summer after my junior year to do research. After graduating I wound up sticking around my school and worked with a professor full time until I started grad school in the fall. If I had known, I could have started at my grad school the summer before classes started to get a head start in the lab.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t try to make it a priority to finish early, though. I graduated since I literally ran out of classes to take within my department. If I wanted to stick around for the full year I would have gotten a MS, but I didn’t really see the reason to take out an additional $10k in loans.</p>
<p>@ConnorR15 Mind if we ask for an update? I’m doing practically the same thing right now! Well, the same thing you started two years ago.</p>