[BeetleB]

A very US-centric perspective. Whereas the folks in Europe do it in 3-4 years, come to the US and do a 2-3 year postdoc (with higher pay than a PhD student), and are ahead of their American peers.

Also, depending on where you do it in Europe, the pay as a PhD student is higher. At the extreme end, I knew students getting paid $60K/year in one country, while I was getting $24K/year in the US.

[adev_]

> A very US-centric perspective. Whereas the folks in Europe do it in 3-4 years

Yes it is.

In most European universities, you will graduate in 3-4y.

And there is simple reasons for that: The funding associated with a Phd in many European country is 3-4y. So if you do not graduate, you actually become a burden for your lab.

[EvgeniyZh]

With 2 years master's before for the same total?

[lowbloodsugar]

A US thing again? My friends all did 3 year bachelors, 3 year PhD. Some dragged out the PhD to 4. Those who do a masters do it in one year, and typically don't do a PhD. Some undergrad courses are 4 year and you get a masters at the end. And my UK bachelors was recognized as equivalent to a US masters degree for visa purposes.

[EvgeniyZh]

Maybe this is CS-specific? Finishing physics PhD from high school in 6 years sounds just not enough time. Even exceptional people I know in my field needed at least 7-8 (3+4 or 3+2+3). 3 years into theoretical physics grad school is around the time people start doing decent research

[lordnacho]

It's common, most of the people I know from the UK system did their PhD in 3-4 years.

In Europe you just study what it says as well. You happy to do a bachelor's in physics, your classes are all physics. You don't read shakespeare and learn french.

You can also do this in high school, so you can from age 16 be studying just physics and math.

[EvgeniyZh]

I did none of my degrees in US, and my physics degree was 95% math and physics. Physics degree is quite sequential anyway. You can't do QM in your first year or QFT in your second year.

I've checked random people I know from oxford and none started after 3-year undergrad and those how did after 4 all did 4 year dphil (small sample size warning). 4+4 is reasonable.

[lowbloodsugar]

Maybe things have changed. We did QM in our first year at Imperial. I suppose we have to make allowances for Oxford. Got to fit the poetry in somewhere. =)

[BeetleB]

Obvious disclaimer: At this point we are talking about outlier colleges/universities.

But to give some examples, I know colleges (both in US and abroad) where people did real analysis and abstract algebra in their first year (and why not - neither requires prerequisites other than maturity).

I know a college (in the US) where they did Jackson for E&M in the 3rd year (and some advanced students did in the 2nd year). In most US universities, people normally do Jackson in the first year of their PhD.

I think it's rare to do QM before 2nd year, but in principle, as long as you know calculus/diff eq, you can get going on it. The catch is that the interesting applications require other branches of physics (e.g. E&M). When I did QM, all those applications were part of QM II anyway.

But yes, again, these are outliers and I wouldn't want to say it's the norm in the whole country.

[lowbloodsugar]

I have three friends with Physics PhDs from Imperial and Cambridge and they did it in three years. That is/was the norm.

[conformist]

Yeah 3 - 4 is typical in STEM at Imperial, depends on the scholarship or funding source. The standard funding tends to assume 3 - 3.5 years, but I vaguely recall that in some departments supervisors had a habit of forcing people to stick around for a few months without funding.

[a_f]

In the UK I started a (3 year) PhD program without a Masters. It was not untypical.

[BeetleB]

Varies from place to place.

In some countries, the PhD program is fixed at 3 years. You either graduate by then, or you're out (in reality, they give some option for you to pay to continue, but almost no one can afford it). I suspect in those places, people have done a 2 year MS.