Can you get a Ph. D. with without having a master’s and just a bachelors?

Yes, you can, it depends on the school and sometimes even the department within the school. Traditionally, you had to go the route of the BA first, then get accepted into (and successfully finish) the MA program, and then apply for PhD studies after that. Then, some schools started accepting exceptionally well-prepared bachelor’s-qualified individuals directly into the PhD program. When that is done, you still do the same number of credits as the MA and PhD combined, just you don’t have to go through the pain in the neck of re-applying after finishing the master’s. Nowadays, some universities, and particularly the more prestigious ones, have no separate admissions to the master’s program, so it is standard at such places to go straight from the BA to the PhD. At such programs, you can pick up your MA “along the way,” so to speak, but many, if not most, choose not to pick up the MA unless they wash out on the dissertation.

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RE:
Can you get a Ph. D. with without having a master's and just a bachelors?

Getting a PhD without getting a MS is typical in biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and engineering. In fact, for a while, getting an MS in one of these fields was seen as a “door prize” because many programs adopted (and most still have) policies whereby students who did not make it through their whole PhD program were “diverted” and allowed to write up whatever they had for a quickie MS degree. Those who got on the ball at that stage are sometimes invited to continue then for the PhD. Only slowly are we seeing the re-emergence of “legitimate” MS degrees in these fields. One reason — and this is a strong reason — is that these programs generally support ALL their students on assistantships, and they don’t like to invest all that money on students who aren’t going to matriculate for the doctorate. Another way of saying that is that they want to milk research productivity in exchange for the research support, and research productivity is much less for an MS degree in those fields. So in fact, many programs will not accept a student who says he or she only wants to get an MS and then leave.

And I agree with the first post — don’t just down other people’s answers unless they’re downright bad. That’s just rude.

935

Yes. Some common examples are an MD and a JD, both of which do not require a masters.

Yep. Usually you do the masters first if you are not sure if you want a doctorate degree. But if you know what you want to do, you can do the PHD only.

Yes, you can get a doctorate without having a master’s degree.

And what’s the deal with the person who gave my answer a low rating! My answer is directly related to the question and answers it! Give me a break! Same goes for Theodore H a few posts down! He provided a great answer that appears to be sincere and well thought out, and someone gave him a “thumbs down” too! Get a life, people!

I don’t think that we have that many programs that do that. AND you have to think about what you are going to do with the doctorate without the masters.

Going through the usual path indicates a willingness to follow rules and Blooms Taxonomy.