I wanted to know if it’s possible to attend two colleges (Law School and Graduate school) for a Ph.D. and JD degree?
The college that I want to attend has both but, it doesn’t have the dual degree/ joint program.
I was looking into graduate school for the Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a Specialization in Forensic Psychology and Law school for JD degree. But I don’t want to wait on getting the JD since the Ph.D. is five years. What do you think the best option?
Is it possible to do both? Sure.
Is it possible to do both at the same time? Very unlikely. If you don’t do a joint program, then likely you would have to do one first and then the other. You might be able to do half of one, then finish the other in between (I had a friend who did an MD and an MPH like that - did two years of the MD, then went on a leave of absence and did the MPH in between, and then went back and finished his MD).
The real question is whether you actually need both of them to do what you want to do. If you want to be a clinical psychologist who specializes in forensics, then you don’t.
And if you do really need both, then why do you want to attend that particular college/university? It doesn’t sound like a good fit necessarily.
what do you want the JD for?
But the short answer is yes, there are plenty of JD & PhD grads, but those generally aim for Law academia.
^^^^But the degrees are not pursued jointly.
Law school does not overlap with typical PhD programs. Law school is six semesters of course work, 30 courses, 3-credits each. Normally, each course is 15 weeks of lectures, followed by an essay exam (no midterms, etc.).
Joint law school/masters programs work by giving common credit for the last year of elective courses designed to satisfy both law school and business classes. Then there is another year of business school, for a total of four years of graduate school. This way the graduate satisfies the 90-credit requirement for law school and the 60-credit requirement for business school. There are variations I’m sure, but that is the basic outline.
A PhD program would include one or two years of course work specific to the PhD and then another 3-5 years of research leading to a dissertation, to be defended in front of a faculty committee. I’m not saying that there is not some kind of joint JD/PhD program out there somewhere. There are 206 accredited law schools, so you could check them all, but as @juliet asked you, why would you want to do something like this? If this is still something that you want to do, then ask your question on the law school forum. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/law-school/
There are JD/PhD programs but if the university you’re aiming for does not offer this option then no you cannot do both concurrently.
Good points from @Beaudreau - there are definitely JD/PhD programs, but upon closer inspection they don’t actually shave off much if any time from the two degrees. Rather, they’re just a way to finish the degrees concurrently. Check out Harvard’s Coordinated JD/PhD program: it theoretically only cuts off about a semester’s worth of coursework.
http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/academics/degree-programs/special-programs/jdphd-program/
Northwestern’s is much more a traditional “joint” program and shaves off an entire year at the law school. They claim that you can finish the program in as little as six years, but I am very skeptical.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/academics/degree-programs/jds/jdphd/
Northwestern does have a formal clinical psych PhD/JD program. They say the program takes 7 years, but that is predicated upon you completing your dissertation in 1 year.
Columbia’s joint program consists of nine semesters of coursework, which is 4.5 years. Then you pass your exams and write the dissertation, which will probably take you an additional 2-3 years, and perhaps 4 or more depending on how much research you were able to get done while you were taking intense law/graduate school coursework. So this is a program that will take you at minimum 6.5 years, but more realistically probably 7-8.
Duke also claims that their JD/PhD “can” be completed in six years “in most cases,” and they state that most students complete their JD/PhDs in 5-6 years. Again, I am skeptical, since you are supposedly stuffing two years’ worth of law school classes into the same amount of time as a normal PhD student finishes the WHOLE program without a JD.
https://law.duke.edu/admis/degreeprograms/jd-phd/
There are a lot of other schools that offer it if you search JD/PhD.
Drexel University