<p>so my question is how quickly is it possible to get a phd or masters.</p>
<p>please dont try to factor in how long studying would take, how hard it would be, etc</p>
<p>i just want to know what is the shortest time in which it is possible to get a phd or masters degree</p>
<p>i understand it is different for different colleges and places. please list what you know. im focused on math or physics. is there a way where you dont have to go through the specific number of credit hours? if you are good enough, is there a way to get ahead quickly, i mean really really quickly.</p>
<p>please list all you know, and can post link or university that i could look into, that would be great. thanks :)</p>
<p>The fastest I can recall anyone going from BS to MS is a year, from BS to PhD 3 years. I do not recommend either route - not just because it is frenetic and exhausting, but also because you don’t get do-overs on this and people who rush it tend to do a pretty bad job. Finishing your PhD at 22 (or whatever) doesn’t make sense if by finishing at 24 or 26 you could have graduated with a better standing and gotten a better job.</p>
<p>And no, as a general rule they will not waive the credit hours - however much of a rush you may be in, the school is in no rush at all, and it is their reputation and standing on the line if they handwave you through and you turn out to be a bad scholar and researcher. They want to be sure, and that takes time.</p>
<p>What is your motivation behind all this? If it is anything other than “I have X years to live and want a PhD before I die” then you are probably charting a bad course.</p>
<p>This is the absolute wrong question, I cannot stress this enough.</p>
<p>As @cosmicfish alluded to above, getting a PhD isn’t just about getting the credential. It’s about building a reputation for yourself as a scholar and a professional. You have to network, publish papers, present at conferences…etc. The requirements, quite frankly, are the least important part of your program. If your goal is getting a position within academia, rushing through it is the absolute worst thing you can do.</p>
<p>I am also curious about your motivation for this, although I agree that there’s no motivation I can think of that would make this a good idea. (Even if you had, say, 2 years to live - spending the last 2 years of your life rushing through a PhD program in math or physics is NOT the way you want to spend the last 2 years of your life.)</p>
<p>this is what i was worried about, i dont know if people are dodging a question, or they dont know the answer. i just want to know if there is any possible way to get phd rapidly. im 16 btw, just graduated highschool, i want to have it, not for a job, just for the sake of having it. i really dont need tips on the reasons and do or dont, i just want to know the fastest way to do it</p>
<p>Schools are unlikely to waive the credit hours/other similar requirements. What benefit would that be to them? If you had a significant body of research prior to coming into the program you might be able to insta-propose and defend based on that work, but you would likely be stuck with the coursework/quals/teaching requirements. Do you care what level of school you would go to? </p>
<p>Are you a math and/or physics prodigy? (though finishing high school at 16 is old on that scale) That would help.</p>
I just went back through your original post, and I cannot find any questions dodged - they were all answered. I think the real problem is that perhaps you did not ask the questions you thought you were asking.</p>
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Sure there is. The easiest (by far) is to send a check or money order to any of several highly reputable* firms that will print you out a diploma saying you have a PhD and an ScD and a GCB if you want. At the end of the day, a PhD is just a document, and literally anyone can give you one, which is why what matters is who gave it to you. And the funny thing is, the PhD’s that have the most value are also the PhD’s that you aren’t going to get with your approach.</p>
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Which is pretty silly, since once you have it your career gets pretty massively impacted and not necessarily for the better.</p>
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Well, you never asked the fastest way to do it, you just asked how fast. Telling someone the height of Everest is a lot different than giving them reasonably precise instructions for climbing it.</p>
<p>Nobody dodged your question. The problem is that there’s no hard and fast answer to your question. it all depends on the department/school and your personal prowess. I would think that if you were coming straight from undergrad, the fastest you could conceivably finish would be 2 years - if you were incredibly prepared and had a viable dissertation topic coming into the door; if all of your experiments worked out perfectly; if you had an advisor who valued speed over development; if you attended a program with light coursework requirements - basically if you were extremely lucky and also lacked a need to sleep more than 4-5 hours a night or have any kind of social life whatsoever, there is a small possibility you could finish in 2, maybe 3 years. 2 years would require you to do coursework, exams, and dissertation research all at the same time, and is nigh impossible.</p>
<p>The other thing you need to know is that your progress and graduation is nearly completely controlled by your adviser. He or she has the final say on whether you graduate. So you can go in with the goal of graduating in 2 years, and then talk to your adviser and he thinks you’re nuts. It’s even happened that students who intended to finish in a more reasonable 4 years were stymied by a professor who thought that their dissertation wasn’t good enough, or that they needed to do one more experiment, or that they should publish more papers before going on the job market. It is the very rare adviser who is going to actively support a doctoral student who wants to graduate in 2-3 years, especially without an MS. If a student came to me with that goal, and steadfastly refused to reevaluate it, I would question his motives and direct him to find another adviser.</p>
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<p>Given that this is a public forum and we’re humans and not robots, we’re inclined to give you not just the information you asked for but other information you might find useful that’s related to your question. Since you didn’t say why you wanted one, it’s reasonable to assume that you had a career-related reason to get one. Moreover, you really do need tips and reasons, even though you think you don’t, because it’s obvious you have no idea what you are trying to get yourself into. (I say that not snarkily, just matter-of-factly.)</p>
<p>But given the additional information, I do have other thoughts:</p>
<p>-A PhD isn’t in and of itself some kind of personal accomplishment or something pretty to hang on the door. It’s a credential to do a specific kind of job. It’s like buying a $100K Mercedes when you don’t plan to drive it, just so you can park it in your driveway.</p>
<p>-A PhD is an enormous investment of time and money; it’s incredibly frustrating and stressful even when you really WANT the jobs that require it. You’re going to be working 60-80+ hours a week for low pay on something that, by your own admission, you don’t really want to do. If you don’t have the motivation of needing it to do something specific, or the intrinsic motivation of loving your research and wanting to pursue it (or both) - you burn out very quickly and join the ranks of the at least 50% who start a PhD and don’t finish. And it’s okay to decide that a PhD is not for you and leave, but it’s kind of silly to know up front that you aren’t going to use it and waste your time doing it anyway.</p>
<p>-To that end - time is money. Even if you only take 3 years to get the PhD, that’s 3 years that you could’ve been doing something productive that contributes to your chosen career. Or, at the very least, 3 years that you could’ve been working, saving, and investing for retirement. That’s also 3 years of experience that you can put on your resume to help you advance in the field you actually choose to work in.</p>
<p>Also, I think a lot of people think that they’ll get tons of respect and adulation for having a PhD, but most people don’t really care that much. When I tell people I am nearly finished with my PhD, most of the time I get a momentary spark of interest, perhaps a 30-90 second conversation about it and then we move on. It doesn’t really make you, socially, special or interesting or anything like that.</p>
<p>With that said, I agree with @cosmicfish. If you just want a PhD fast, but you don’t care where it comes from because you won’t use it in your career, go to Walden or Capella or their ilk and get one. Those programs actually require a modicum of work, though…the fastest way is to pay your money to a diploma mill.</p>