<p>"Students may submit the written report of their second-year project as a Masters Thesis. However, for the Ph.D. degree, no MA is required, and most students move directly to the completion of the doctorate."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.seweb.uci.edu/cls/phd.uci%5B/url%5D">http://www.seweb.uci.edu/cls/phd.uci</a></p>
<p>Does that mean that after getting your BA, you can automatically skip masters and go to Ph.D? How long does a Ph.D take to complete?</p>
<p>There are actually many, but not a huge amount, programs where you can work towards your Ph.D right after your bachelor's degree. However, I've heard Ph.D programs can dismiss you whenever they feel like you can't keep up. What usually ends up happening is your mentor tells you that you cannot keep up, and you grab your master's degree and leave. I'm not sure how long Ph.Ds can take since they vary among each program/person, but I think a lot of them have a maximum of 6 years where you will be stopped.</p>
<p>That was interesting... I didn't know that you could actually go from BA to Ph.D. I think that if i go UCI I'll be doing that.</p>
<p>Is getting Ph.D cheaper than undergrad courses? I heard some colleges give free tuition to Ph.D students.</p>
<p>Most people in natural sciences don't bother with a masters degree any longer. It is just a waste of time to get a masters if you really want a PhD. Why would you want to waste 2-3 years getting a masters to then turn around and spend another 5-6 to get a PhD when you can do it in one fell swoop when masters don't carry much weight in the job market? In my exerience you have to be a major screw-up to get bumped from a PhD program to settling for a masters and the usual route to this is an inability to pass the oral exam before you are advanced to candidacy. If you fail this, they will usually give you at least one more opportunity to repeat them but failure implies that you probably don't have the knowledge base to progress on for your PhD. Professors rarely (don't know of one case) force a student into the masters track without merit and usually appreciate the cheap labor in the lab. In addition, you are a student within a program rather than the property of a particular professor so if things aren't working out with one prof, the student can arrange other accommodations (happens quite a bit). Your current assumptions are that an individual prof has all the power and holds all the cards which is certainly not the case.</p>
<p>Wow,thanks for the information. Yea, I just remembered my cousin changed professors because she had difficulty with that prof. I've been contemplating a Ph.D in electrical engineering. Does anyone know if there are electrical engineering Ph.D programs that don't require a master's degrees at UC, caltech, stanford, or USC? I'll be looking around.</p>
<p>Most Ph.D. programs don't require a master's degree. It's not unusual.</p>
<p>hey Kai, are you majoring in Criminology law & scoiety at UCI? </p>
<p>Do you guys think it'll be hard to get into the Criminology PHD program if lets say i went to another UC and major in social science but not as specific. maybe poli sci? Or would it be easier/better if i did my undergrad in crimi. Law & scoiety at UCI to have a better chance of getting into the grad program.</p>
<p>Beloved-</p>
<p>No, im still in highschool but it's where i DEFINITELY wanna get into when i graduate. (junior now) and it's pretty good to ask a lot of questions right? <3</p>
<p>yup yup anyone want to take a shot at the question above? =)</p>