<p>If you have a M.S. and are admitted to a Ph.D. program,
does it take another 5 years to finish it?</p>
<p>I'm talking about a situation in which you have had to
go through the entire application process for a Ph.D.,
rather than one in which you automatically earn a
M.S. after first two years of a Ph.D. program.</p>
<p>It depends on the programs involved. </p>
<p>If the fields match up AND the MS was an "academic" degree as opposed to a vocational one AND the work done in the MS department was equivalent to what is expected in the PhD department...you MAY get advanced standing. </p>
<p>The only way to know is to actually meet with the university and department admissions people at the schools you're interested in and go over your transcript to confirm what, if anything, will transfer.</p>
<p>In my field, Classics, its fairly common for grad students to have MAs from different schools than their PhD institution. One fellow who I knew as a TA here at Penn (he's now a Prof at U of Mn) got his MA from The University of Reading and his PhD at Penn.</p>
<p>The above poster had good advice. It varies from program to program and also from student to student. My Ph.D. was in the same field as my master's so I completed my actual course work in just over two years. (took a full graduate load each semester which was 12 hours and never skipped a summer session) My dissertation took me a year to research and write so I finished mine in just over three years. However, my father took about 5 years to complete his because his disseration research took longer. That will have a bearing on the time of completion. Ask the departments you are looking into what the average time of completion is for your particular degree.</p>
<p>It depends. 3 to 5 years is the usual range, though some may take longer for various reasons.</p>
<p>I just started my PhD program after getting my MS and was told that superstars can complete in 3 years, but more normally 4. This is so you can get more publications under your belt before trying to pursue a job in academia (or a post-doc). For my group, you need 3 publications as first author as a PhD student to complete the degree, so I'm planning on 4-5 years to finish up.</p>
<p>What is it like going to graduate school trying to receive your master's degree? How is it different from undergraduate schooling?</p>
<p>Thank you for replies!</p>
<p>Ted Streleski took 19 years until his advisor was satisfied with his thesis and then worked another 3 years until he was satisfied - some west coast school. </p>
<p>I saw him on Phil (Donahue, not Dr.). He was very reasonable and rationale, just don't tell him he used a claw hammer to kill his advisor - it was a ball peen hammer.</p>
<p>Speaking from my sister's experience at Yale: </p>
<p>She transferred into the PhD program after doing a masters at the University of Arizona. Yale forced her to do another masters at once she arrived, and now somehow she has three masters degrees. The entire PhD track program at Yale took her 8 years to complete. She was extremely unhappy there and didn't get on well with her supervisor, so this probably had an significant adverse effect on her work. It also took a long time to get her project approved by the department because there was disagreement about the direction her thesis should take.</p>
<p>So it seems that time to completion depends on the person and on the project. Things can go wrong, supervisors can turn out to be wankers. But things can also run smoothly. You don't really know until you're doing it, I guess.</p>