MA/PhD Transfer Program

[Cutethulhu]

So I got accepted into and intend to enrol in an MA/PhD transfer program. Basically, I’ll spend the first year in the Masters program and then transfer into the PhD in my second year. That means two things: 1) I’m not doing a Masters thesis; 2) I don’t have to reapply for the PhD. I was just wondering if anyone has done a program like this and what your experiences are like?

 

I guess I should also mention that I’m from Canada, where the norm is to do a Masters then a PhD.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Cutethulhu

[Mickey26]

PM'd you

[lewin]

I did this. In our program people finished in 5-6 years total. My experience was that you were treated like a PhD student from day one, i.e., the MA admission was so that you could apply for MA-level tricouncil awards in your first year and in practice they considered you a PhD student from day 1.  My impression from other programs was that they had more "hoops" to jump through for the MA, e.g., thesis proposal, defence, writeup. But that structure might be good for some people where you can have a defined accomplishment after 1-2 years, instead of a longer period of time with fewer benchmarks.

[FacelessMage]

On 3/2/2019 at 5:00 AM, Cutethulhu said:

So I got accepted into and intend to enrol in an MA/PhD transfer program. Basically, I’ll spend the first year in the Masters program and then transfer into the PhD in my second year. That means two things: 1) I’m not doing a Masters thesis; 2) I don’t have to reapply for the PhD. I was just wondering if anyone has done a program like this and what your experiences are like?

 

I guess I should also mention that I’m from Canada, where the norm is to do a Masters then a PhD.

My program is like this (Canadian clinical psych program). I came in with a Masters already (although not in clinical) so I was in a weird position where I sort of had advanced standings (i.e., got to opt out of a few of the first year "Masters" courses because I had already done them) but was still considered to be in the Masters program. It was nice not having to do another thesis, so I could start thinking of my dissertation sooner.