|
When I went to grad school, I just got admitted to the grad school and not specifically a Master's program, a terminal Master's program, or a Ph.D. program. After enough courses, and maybe a paper (I wrote a paper, later published as part of a reading course) can get a Master's. I did that, got a Master's. If want a Ph.D., then just pass the Ph.D. qualifying exams (QE), courses or not, Master's or not. After passing the QE, do some research. The standard was "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication", and the usual criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant". So, proposed a dissertation research project (I already had a 50 page manuscript I had done on my own on a problem I brought with me to grad school), got approval to work on that as my dissertation, I did some research, derived some math, wrote and ran some software, wrote up what I'd done, stood for an oral exam, passed, and got a Ph.D. I never paid tuition. If for some Master's program Georgia Tech is charging a lot of money, they they should have something different from what I outlined. |