If you’re planning on pursuing a postgraduate degree in the United States, there are a number of things to keep in mind. A postgraduate course of study is a course of study that requires a completed bachelor’s degree as a prerequisite.
There are three different types of postgraduate study programmes: vocational master’s programmes, academic master’s programmes and doctoral programmes. Career-related master’s programs are also called final programs and are designed to lead to subsequent entry into the world of work.
Academic master’s degrees, on the other hand, are the exact opposite, they are designed to prepare students for a subsequent doctorate, i.e. the pursuit of a doctorate.
To achieve these two degrees, you need between one and three years. The highest academic degree you can achieve is the doctorate. To obtain this, it takes between four and eight years to complete both the required courses and the dissertation.
The requirements for a postgraduate study program vary worldwide depending on the country. In the United States, most graduate programs – a term used in North America to describe a master’s program – require students to pass certain exams to test their skills and knowledge. These can vary greatly, ranging from a small test at the end of each course to a comprehensive exam at the end of the academic year or even at the end of the entire course, asking for everything you have learned in the entire time.
There are also comprehensive exams in the first year of the program to find out what knowledge you have acquired in the courses of the undergraduate study program. In order to obtain the master’s degree, one usually also has to write a master’s thesis (this is especially true for the academic master’s degree), which deals with a specific research question in a certain field and must be both presented and defended in order to get the degree.
Master’s students in the United States have a whole range of options when it comes to financial aid, depending on the university they attend. These can be associated with specific tasks, such as organizing activities in dormitories, teaching assignments, or assisting faculty with grading, tutorials, or research. Students who are selected for these tasks are then eligible for tuition fee waivers, or scholarships for housing allowances and the like. The faculty to which your degree program belongs may also have some funds available that are paid for research work or made available for attending professional conferences.
A doctorate is the highest degree of postgraduate courses. Normally, you start the doctoral program after completing an academic master’s degree, but even those who have completed a career-specific master’s degree can come back to the university later for a doctoral program. The amount of time it takes to earn a doctorate has increased continuously in recent years and can now take any time between four and eight years.
Originally, doctoral programs were designed to take between one and two years. In these first two to three years of their studies, doctoral students complete various courses and develop an idea for their doctoral thesis, and research can already begin. At the end of the course phase, there is usually a comprehensive exam, which can be compared with that of the Master’s program, for example. This exam, which is needed to continue, tests students’ understanding of their field and covers specific aspects of the courses as well as extensive knowledge of the subject.
Once they have passed these exams, the students move on to the next and longest step of their final phase of education, they are now doctoral candidates. As a doctoral candidate, the student will spend the next three to eight years writing the doctoral thesis and doing the necessary research. Competition for jobs in this field is very high and many students choose to delay the completion of their doctoral thesis a little longer in order to remain enrolled in the study program and at the university.
SO they continue to have access to university connections and libraries, making it easier to publish their publications and find work. The doctoral program concludes with the presentation and defense of the doctoral thesis of the respective candidate, and if you are successful, you will receive the doctoral degree.
Students in doctoral programs have even more funding options available than master’s students. Universities are competing fiercely for these students and are therefore offering more waivers in tuition fees and also increasingly comprehensive stipends for living expenses. As in the Master’s programme, however, certain tasks must be taken on, such as teaching, assisting in research areas and in general tasks of the faculty.
At some universities, students are even paid to work on their own research. The faculties of the universities, as mentioned above, have some funds available to finance things like conferences, research presentations, travel, and other things. Students can also partner with companies in their field of research, in which case the company pays for the tuition fees and offers a certain salary in return for the results of the research.
If you are interested in a postgraduate program in the United States and are still looking for a university, you can use the search function of the Princeton Review or the guide of Peterson’s. This way you are sure to find the right university. Both websites are recognized all over the world as reliable sources on postgraduate education.
