<p>I'm not sure if there is another thread with this topic (I really didn't feel like searching through 121 pages to find out), but could someone tell me the difference between graduate school and professional school? I'm trying to explain the difference to my mom and she's not understanding, I'm not sure if I'm explaining it right because it makes sense to me. From what I understand, professional school is for doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc and graduate school is if you want to expand your knowledge on a certain subject (for me this would be Anthropology/Archaeology). I know from speaking to different professors that graduate schools only admit a few students a year (if that) because the school either gives them a tuition reduction or waives the fee in exchange for work. This is where I lose my mom. She does not understand why a school would only accept 2 or 3 students a year when they have students who are willing to pay to go there. If anyone knows WHY this is the case, please let me know- I don't know how to explain it to her any differently and it's beginning to frustrate the both of us.</p>
<p>Graduate school is generally considered to be a masters or PhD in non-vocational fields.</p>
<p>Professional school = MD, JD, etc., including MBA. Usually jobs that are viewed to pay more have less funding, professional schools plus clinical psychology and many MA/MS degrees (PT/Pharmacy/OT)</p>
<p>A PhD track should be funded, likely by requiring one to teach classes, there are a limited number of students for whom there is money to pay them for teaching, which they would use for living expenses. And a limit to the number of students a prof can/will supervise.</p>
<p>As somemom mentioned, the reason admissions is bottlenecked is not because a school is oblivious to the fact that some people are willing to pay for a Ph.D., but rather that programs are limited by the amount of faculty willing to supervise students. A Ph.D. is an academic mentorship; a lot of resources are exerted to train a doctoral student and this could be draining on a professor and department.</p>
<p>Graduate school is much more like an internship than another two/four/six years of college. It’s advanced training in research and teaching a particular field.</p>
<p>I believe graduate school is research oriented. Professional school provides a non-research/non-thesis degree.</p>
<p>To clarify some of the above comments:</p>
<p>Professional schools provide additional academic training in a specific field. They operate in a manner similar to undergraduate programs (albeit more difficult) and provide a broad basis of knowledge. Because the time investment in individual students is very low, admitting more students is primarily a question of facilities and standards.</p>
<p>Graduate schools provide additional academic training and foment research in a specific SUBfield. While they do include some classroom time similar (but more difficult) to undergrad, the key portion of a graduate non-professional degree is the research component, spent studying under an advisor who serves as a teacher and mentor. Graduate degrees provide increasingly narrow and deep levels of knowledge - a PhD is supposed to make you the world expert in a very specific area, whereas an MD provides a basic level of qualification in a broad area. Because the time investment in individual students is quite high, admitting more students is problematic - each new student takes some time that would otherwise be spent on research.</p>
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<p>Actually, PhD students, when trained and selected correctly, are actually supposed to increase the productivity of the professor and department, at least in the later stages of the PhD process and beyond. The initial portion of PhD training - which generally comprises coursework and qualification exams - is indeed a net negative to productivity. But in the later years, the PhD student ideally will be contributing to the productivity of his mentor and the department as a whole. Once the PhD is granted, most people will continue to collaborate with their mentors to produce more research.</p>
<p>Otherwise, departments would be well-advised to simply never admit any PhD students at all, or admit only a tiny token number in order to maintain their ‘educational’ mission. That is also often times why many faculty - especially junior faculty - enjoy having PhD students and often times prefer to admit more of them because each of them represents a living, breathing productivity boost.</p>
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<p>Here’s a question: is a master’s program in engineering considered to be graduate school or professional school?</p>
<p>Depends. An MEng is generally a professional degree, while an MS could be research-oriented.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies everyone! What you have said was pretty much what I was thinking, hopefully now I can phrase what I was saying in a different way so that my mom will understand.</p>