Step by Step Guide : How to Apply for phd after bachelors in USA?

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A doctorate as a qualification is one of the highest you can achieve as a student. In fact, a doctorate in your subject is one of the primary requirements to teach at any premier university across the world. While the doctorate can be an obscure topic, study in USA still remains one of the primary options owing to a large number of world-class universities, as well as the fact that there is an option to pursue your Ph.D. degree after your bachelor’s. While it certainly isn’t one of the more common ways, there are ways that one can go about this.

Step by Step Guide : How to Apply for Study PHD in USA?

One of the most common is that universities in usa don’t directly let you into the PhD program, rather letting you into a combined program. Therefore, along with PhD, in USA, you’d also be enrolled in the Master’s University. This can be an extremely competitive program with universities sometimes taking in only as few as 3-4 students. While some universities may directly credit you the master’s course upon enrolment, others might require you to do additional coursework to be eligible for the PhD program. This basically means that a student would be studying for a Master’s degree for 2-3 years, and then, spend the remaining time for Ph.D. work. Here is the time spent on average for the top 5 universities in USA.

University

Average Time Spent

MIT

5 Years (2 years coursework and minimum 3 years for research)

Harvard

6 years ( 1-2 years in coursework and rest for research)

CalTech

5 Years

Princeton

Around 5 years (2 years coursework)

Yale

6-7 (3-3 Coursework)

How to Apply:

Applications for PhD in the USA are quite similar to that for a Master’s program since you can’t expect Bachelor’s students to have any advanced degree or any research publications. It should be remembered that because of that, the program can be highly competitive. The things that are typically required for applying for this course

  1. An Extremely strong GPA. This is one of the most important things because the program is highly competitive. You’d need an extremely good GPA to get into the course
  2. GMAT or GRE. The scores that you’d need for this course are usually slightly more than the average scores required for a normal Master’s course. For this reason, you have to focus on which university you want to apply to understand the program requirements to work on your scores.
  3. IELTS and TOEFL for international students to assess language proficiency. While TOEFL has a much wider acceptance in the Ph.D. in USA, IELTS is required for the combined programs, where a student’s proficiency is testing in all four areas- listening, reading, writing, and speaking.
  4. Letters of Recommendation- at least two from the professors who you worked closely with, or in case of work experience, managers you closely worked with
  5. Your SOP or your cover letter depending on the university’s requirements
  6. Essays depending on the university’s requirements
  7. Interviews depending on the policies
  8. It is best if you have any research journals or have elected research methodology or studies in your Bachelor’s final year. That’ll add brownie points for you.

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Dhruv
About the Author:

Dhruv is Content Creator at °Ç¸çºÚÁÏ.com. He is fond of words and everything related to them. Writing about different things from around the world gives him immense pleasure, and a very healthy by-product is sharing the information and helping others in the process.

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