Is Leaving a PhD program after M.A 'quitting'?

[cr615]

I am in an M.A/PhD program in the humanities. I applied to the PhD program, came in with the full intention of finishing the degree at my current school, and was totally excited about it. 

Recently though, I have been strongly considering leaving after finishing the M.A portion of the program and taking my academic career in a different direction. I am in an interdisciplinary field, which I thought was great because I would have the flexibility of studying the topic I was interested in (religion/theology) without being fully tied to it if I decided my interests lay elsewhere. However, I am realizing how much I ACTUALLY AM interested in religion as a field of study. At the same time, I am realizing that students in my program just aren't interested in the study of religion, so very very few courses are created that will allow me to pursue this. 

I am thinking about finishing M.A, and then perhaps applying to other PhD programs that align more closely to my interests or divinity schools. Obviously quitting a PhD program is not a good thing to do for multiple reasons but would any of you with experience still consider leaving after the M.A portion 'quitting'? My program also offers M.As as a terminal degree, so its not like this is a PhD only program. I am just curious about the optics, and I would be shooting myself in the foot. 

[TakeruK]

It's just a word. Whether it looks bad to leave will depend partly on how you explain your decision to leave, how your reference letter writers describe it and the perspective of the person reading your PhD application. So even if I (or anyone else here) says yes it is "quitting" or no it isn't, it's not very relevant to how your PhD application will be evaluated. Personally, I don't think I would ever use the terms "quitting" or "firing" or anything like that, instead it's a question of whether the student chose to leave or the student was required to leave.

I think you have a good case on explaining why you are choosing to leave your current PhD program. Research interest/fit is a convenient reason that has "good optics" because it clearly conveys no fault, poor performance or anything like that. It says that you're a good student and the program is a good program, but you two just aren't right for each other.

So, the next step is ensuring strong recommendation letters from your current program. You want letters to confirm that yes, you are a good student and would be successful in the PhD program but you just have different interests. There would be bad optics if you either had letters that suggested the program wasn't happy with you or if you didn't include any letters from your current advisor at all. This step is a little tricky because you're going to have to have the tough conversation where you tell your advisor and other faculty members that you would like to leave the program early. I don't have direct advice here because the best way to do this depends a lot on the dynamics of each individual department. Perhaps you can talk to people you trust for advice on how to bring it up to the relevant people. Hopefully your advisor would be professional and will help you go on the path that is best for you. One other tricky thing to think about is whether or not you would stay in the PhD program if you end up not getting into anywhere else.

The last part depends on what the person reading your application thinks of people who leave graduate programs early. This is completely out of your control so I would not worry about it. As long as you take care of the first two parts, there's nothing you can do if someone evaluating you is just prejudiced against people who want to change programs for whatever bogus reason. I think that the number of people that think this way is small, so apply widely and hopefully you will avoid most of them.