Completing PhD in 7 or 8 years

[taylortaylor164]

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Hi,

I was talking with a friend the other day and he said that he may have to take 7 or 8 years to complete his PhD. I believe he said that he had to leave a practicum as they were asking too many hours from him. I told him this may look bad on his CV but he disagreed. Who is right here?

 

[WisNeuro]

If there is an adequate explanation, it can be fine. But I would say that an inordinate amount of time spent in grad school can be a red flag. Also, are we talking grad school plus internship, or just grad school years?

 

[erg923]

Hi,

I was talking with a friend the other day and he said that he may have to take 7 or 8 years to complete his PhD. I believe he said that he had to leave a practicum as they were asking too many hours from him. I told him this may look bad on his CV but he disagreed. Who is right here?

6+1 (internship) is not uncommon. 7+1 and 8+1 is more rare and may mean something is not right?

 

[taylortaylor164]

This is including internship.

 

[WisNeuro]

I agree with erg, 6+1 would not be uncommon, particularly for more research-minded folks trying to pad publications. After that, it may require some explanation.

 

[Ollie123]

I did 7+1 just because I had gotten married in year 5 and my wife moved to join me so moving again for internship right away would have just been...mean. I've always been more of a "slow and steady wins the race" kinda guy anyways and enjoyed grad school so wasn't in any real hurry.

It came up in I think 1 or 2 out of 13 internship interviews and not a single time afterwards. I don't hide it, but I did structure my CV just so it isn't completely obvious (i.e. I just list the graduation date for my degrees versus 200x-200y). Landed some pretty prestigious gigs since then without a mention. That said, as others have noted above I do think it depends some on circumstances. It was a clinical science program and even within that world I was at the extreme far-end of research-focused. I was quite productive and came out with ~15 pubs, multiple grants and awards, etc. and those kinds of things would likely overshadow any concerns about my timeline. If a relatively pure-clinician coming out with a couple posters and maybe 1 pub took that long, I agree it could be more of a red flag. Still don't think it would be a fatal flaw per se, but perhaps more of an issue.

 

[futureapppsy2]

I agree with erg, 6+1 would not be uncommon, particularly for more research-minded folks trying to pad publications. After that, it may require some explanation.

The clinical psych PhD program at my undergrad alma marter has long had a painful time to completion problem (~25% of the students taking 6+1 years, with another 25% taking more than 7 years, only 8% doing 4+1), and I’m honestly surprised that it hasn’t been more of an issue for them, because it’s really, really not a publication-heavy group of students (most graduating with 0 publications).

 

[WisNeuro]

The clinical psych PhD program at my undergrad alma marter has long had a painful time to completion problem (~25% of the students taking 6+1 years, with another 25% taking more than 7 years, only 8% doing 4+1), and I’m honestly surprised that it hasn’t been more of an issue for them, because it’s really, really not a publication-heavy group of students (most graduating with 0 publications).

Yeah, if people are coming out very productive in terms of research, those numbers don't look bad at all. But, if you were in school full-time and are applying to internship after 7 years in grad school with 0 pubs, it would definitely strike me as odd as a reviewer.

 

[bcliff]

Average time to complete for my program (including internship) was 6 years with an SD of 1 year. Almost every cohort of ~10 students had at least 1-2 students take 7 years to graduate. Maybe once every other year a student took more than 7 years to graduate.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

My university had a "hard limit" of 7 years to completion, although I suspect there would've been the potential to request an extension. I would agree that 6+1 isn't altogether unusual and probably wouldn't raise many eyebrows. 7+1 is less common and could be a yellow flag if on a CV, depending (see above posts for some extenuating situations).