Time to Completion

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Anyone have any thoughts on programs with good time to completion numbers? I have a friend at Binghamton who is in her 4th year without receiving her master's degree yet - terrifying! She said that her mentor is impossible.

 

[lazure]

Tell her to get that M.A. and find a new mentor for the PhD otherwise she'll never graduate.

 

[psypsypsy]

Overall, it really varies. You can look up those stats of # of years to completion, but I found that they were often off. Since programs are small, one random person who end up taking 8 years (for personal reasons, whatever) throw off the numbers. That said, some programs say they take 5, while others say 6, so that could be a difference to look at.

Also, when you interview, that's a great question to ask potential mentors, etc.

 

[Sanman]

Yeah, time to completion really depends partly on you and partly on whether you have a mentor that is willing to work with you to meet your goals. I'd look at average years to completion for the different classes. There may be outliers, but you will see a general trend as they post these for several years. As for your friend, Binghamton can be weird that way, I know people from that program who obtained their masters a year before their doctorate.

 

[LM02]

I agre with everything that has been said. But I'd also add that you should specifically look at time to completion for students within a given mentor's lab. For example, my grad school mentor really supported the 5 years + 1 year internship route, because he felt that it gives you more time to publish and that you can have dissertation fully defended before internship.

Other mentors in my department were much more quick to encourage the 4 year plan, but their students often left for internship without having defended their dissertations. So there are pros and cons to each.

 

[phd2006]

Lots of good suggestions.

Course work is the easy part as these are laid out each semester and as long as you take the required units/classes, you'll stay on target. Most schools will provide you with their average completion time if you request (plus you get an idea when you look at the number of courses/units required for completion).

In my experience, it is the research that 'holds' students back. Not only ask a potential research mentor/chair the average length it takes for his/her students to graduate (both MA and Ph.D./Psy.D.) but also, what is their turn-around time for drafts (an average of 2 weeks is good) and how many students are they currently supervising either in their lab or on thesis/dissertation as this will give you an idea of their workload as well.