Are there no master programs in the sciences?

[flycatcher]

Hi, I'm a Canadian and I'm unfamiliar with the american graduate school system. I'm considering doing a graduate degree in basic science research in the biomedical field (e.g. molecular bio, biochemistry, immunology, microbiology, cancer biology, etc) at an American university. I was planning on doing a master program, but after research I noticed that most american universities only offer Ph.D programs in these field, not master programs. Instead, you have to commit to the PhD program and MS is granted in the process of getting the PhD, but not by itself. Since then, I heard rumours that MS are only granted if you fail the Ph.D qualitifications, and therefore are not well-regarded degrees in US. I know this is not the case in most humanities fields, but can someone familiar with the medical sciences confirm this for me? This is all very new to me because in Canada masters are given out as their own proper degree.

I'm new to the forum so I apologize if i'm posting in the wrong place. If you could direct me somewhere I can find the answer I would really appreciate it.

[aginath]

You might get a more directed answer in http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/28-life-sciences/

However, I can speak having done my undergraduate and master's at a university that has Biological Science programs and offers M.S. degrees in almost every discipline therein. A quick check of U.S. News & World Reports shows Stanford to be the current #1 in Sciences. A google for Stanford biomedical science led me to the Stanford School of Medicine, where I found this: http://med.stanford.edu/ms/

Perhaps that will help you in your journey for information. Good luck!

[so47]

My field is chemistry, so I can tell you what I know about that area. Most of the top-tier programs in their field do not offer terminal Master's degrees. Meaning schools like Harvard are not going to admit students for only a Master's. Like you said, you can receive a Master's if you choose to leave the PhD program early (not necessarily fail, though that occasionally happens. More often that people decide it's too long, family reasons, issues with their advisor, etc). It probably depends on what type of career you want to go into as to how much that matters (ex: in industry it matters less than in academia), but yes might be a risk of someone who is familiar with the system thinking that you just couldn't hack the PhD.

There are schools that do offer terminal masters programs, especially those that also offer part-time grad programs (which the top tier schools also do not usually allow), BUT these programs rarely provide funding. Their reasoning is that grad students are the heart of research institution, so PhD students who are there for 5+ years are a better investment than a 2 year masters student.

You just have to do some research to find out what schools offer Master's, I promise they exist! Good luck with your search!

[flycatcher]

Thank you both very much!

I'm indeed looking at some of the top American schools such as Stanford, Caltech, Columbia, Harvard, etc. Although these top schools do offer master programs in the biological sciences, they are often more book-based rather than the wet-bench laboratory research that I'm looking for. For example, they offer masters in disciplines such as biotechnology, bioinformatics, or genetic counselling, whereas I want to do basic science research in fields such as biochem, molecular bio, immuno, etc.

so47 thanks for the info. That was indeed some of the rumours I heard. If there is someone familiar with the medical sciences, I would really appreciate some insight on how MS is regarded in this field.