Negotiating an acceptance to a PhD?

[dherres]

A guy I know is trying to convince me I should do this with my MA "condolence" acceptance school. He has a PhD from another school, in another field. He insists that I should more or less say that I'm very eager to attend their their PhD program, it's my first choice, but other PhD programs have expressed their interest in me as a student, and thus I am asking if they might reconsider their decision, perhaps with the coursework for the MA being incorporated into the PhD.

This feels very uncomfortable to me, but I told him I'd think about it, and thought I'd throw it out there for anyone else's opinion. Is it sketchy, or valid?

[lotf629]

I have never heard of such a thing. I'd definitely advise against it. I can't imagine a program taking you up on it. They would probably tell you that you could apply to the Ph.D. after finishing the masters, along with everybody else. You also run the risk of seeming clueless...not that you are clueless, just that you could seem to be. Maybe others have different feedback?

[ridgey]

Did they offer you any kind of funding for the masters? Do PhDs in the programme normally get funded? Is the masters programme secretly (or not so secretly) funding the PhD students?

Anyway, I don't think it's a good idea. If it were a matter of a course or two, they could have made that a condition of acceptance to the PhD programme. And, if you've kept your tagline here uptodate, you'd be fudging it to try and say other schools have expressed interest and use that as a negotiating point.

Also, many schools - not all, but plenty; you'd need to figure out whether it's true for your school - are reluctant to take their own masters students into their PhD programmes. So if you do your masters at this place, make sure you have other places to apply when your done; don't assume that the masters from there will give you a leg up if you need to reapply.

[dherres]

Did they offer you any kind of funding for the masters? Do PhDs in the programme normally get funded? Is the masters programme secretly (or not so secretly) funding the PhD students?

Anyway, I don't think it's a good idea. If it were a matter of a course or two, they could have made that a condition of acceptance to the PhD programme. And, if you've kept your tagline here uptodate, you'd be fudging it to try and say other schools have expressed interest and use that as a negotiating point.

Also, many schools - not all, but plenty; you'd need to figure out whether it's true for your school - are reluctant to take their own masters students into their PhD programmes. So if you do your masters at this place, make sure you have other places to apply when your done; don't assume that the masters from there will give you a leg up if you need to reapply.

No solid funding yet, but they usually offer financial aid in grants and scholarships, both merit and need-based. And they do take MA students into the PhD, they just have to reapply like everyone else as lotf629 mentioned, but it's certainly not a guarantee. And the info on here is up to date..... And other schools HAVE expressed an interest, both before and after applying, but just haven't made any offers. So technically it's true, albeit quite misleading. Ah, semantics!

Thanks for your help. I'm glad to know that I'm not the one who's crazy in this situation!

[belowthree]

I know at least in my department at my school if a professor is interested in sticking up for a PhD student (read: they commit to funding that student) then the student can go through an internal process to switch their degree type from an MS to a PhD with a one page form. (This means that a tricky undergraduate can go from a BS to a BS/MS to a PhD without ever having to take the GRE. But it requires a lot of things to work out well, usually entails paying for the first year or two of grad school and you have to be good enough to get a professor to fund you that it would have been wise of you to apply elsewhere instead anyways...)

So... it really depends on the department.

[MDLee]

They would probably tell you that you could apply to the Ph.D. after finishing the masters, along with everybody else.

Seriously! I had a woman come into our MA program (history) with NO background in it at all and she wanted to jump right into PhD...they shouldn't have admitted her to the MA--she didn't meet the requirements--but they were being generous and she complained the whole way...

I'm not saying that our original poster is like that--but do agree with the refrain of "Do this...along with everybody else..."

I wouldn't advise trying to negotiate my way up until I had started the MA program. If you don't have an MA, its not a bad place to start--some universities will take time off of your PhD when you get to the higher levels for having completed 2 years (or 3 as the case may be) in Masters.

I know that at least in history they recommend you get you MA first, because grad school can be like drinking from a fire hose and jumping into the deep end of the pool may kill you. Acceptance to ANY program is a plus at this point...congrats on that much!