Colorado Technical University

Is it acceptable to apply to both a masters and a doctoral program at the same school?

...in the same field too? I don't want to risk not going to grad school at a school for getting rejected from a doctoral program when I might get into the masters program. Thoughts? (engineering discipline)

Public Comments

1. not really.. it's all the same department so the program head and program coordinator will be looking over all the applications.. first of all, i don't know if that's even legal (check with the school), second, even if it is, it's not going to look good when they see you apply to both..
2. That's kind of odd, and the people looking at your application will undoubtedly think the same thing I do. You can probably do it, sure, but I'd actually instead talk to someone in the department and tell them what you're thinking. You might be able to get out of them what the odds are of being accepted for either case if they know the available projects coming down the line in that program. . . because MS and Ph.D. projects aren't interchangeable, and sometimes one has a lot more spaces open than the other. Your odds would probably be a lot better of getting in if you applied to the MS program and made a point to tell them that you're really interested in a Ph.D. if that's possible. You're somewhat of an unknown quantity on research right now, so taking you for a major project right off is more risk than a lot of professors are willing to take. They'll probably try treating you more like a Ph.D. student if you tell them that's what you want and see how it goes. . . people over in the registrar's office can easily change your status at any point if your department tells them they want you for a Ph.D. after they've seen how you do in the lab for a few months. Honestly, the time for a MS + Ph.D. isn't necessarily any different than the time for a Ph.D. How well your research cooperates and what your advisor thinks you need to do are at least as big of a factor as anything else, since the class-number requirements are probably going to be about the same. The only difference is that you're seeing two research projects instead of one, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing since you're going to be expected to know about designing your own research once you have a Ph.D.