Are there many 1-year masters/graduate programmes for prestigious US unis?

Question

I'm a British student so the US system seems so alien to me. I've checked out Princeton, MIT, Harvard etc and they all seem to offer 2 or more year long masters/graduate programmes! Please help explain.

Answer 1

Some places do indeed have 1 year programmes, but have you checked out the possibility of advanced standing? A UK bachelors is generally considered more advanced than a US one because you study the subject in greater depth, so there's the possibility that you could skip some or all of the first year work. Probably not at top schools though, they like you to go all the way through their programmes.

It would help if you said what subject area you want to study, so we could recommend particular schools. You can check out the US and World News for some basic ranking information to give you more ideas of where to look, and if you can get hold of it, the Gourman report has subject specific rankings. Obviously, take all these rankings with a pinch of salt, they're not necessarily based on substantial statistics but can be useful for providing names to look.

Answer 2

First, you have to understand that every outstanding college graduate in the USA wants to go to an Ivy or one of the other elite schools (Duke, Stanford, Chicago, etc) So your chance of getting into one of those programs is nil unless you are one of the most outstanding students in Britain and have references to prove it.

OK, that still leaves about 1,950 other colleges in the USA. You can apply to one of the other schools in the top 200 or so and have a good chance of getting in.

The M.A. or M.S. degree in the USA usually takes 2 years after the Bachelors degree. Usually that means about 8 courses of 3 credits each (a standard course meets three hours a week for a 14 week term or "semester"-- 42 hours of instruction, 3 credits)
For a M.A. you usually take courses for one year and then do a thesis which would be a serious academic research paper or project of about 100 pages (less, but more original research in science, longer but more academic in humanities)

There are many programs in which the students take more courses and do not complete a thesis. These programs are common, but are generally regarded as less prestigious by people in the know.

If you are doing a thesis in a nationally famous department they are not going to let you get by with shoddy work. If it takes an extra year for you to finish the thesis, then that's what it takes. You have to do whatever they tell you.

In the USA it became a requirement back int he 1950s for all high school teachers to have a Masters, since then the standards for MS and MA have been lowered and there are M.Ed. and M.A.T. (Master of Arts in Teaching) degrees which are, let's say, not very prestigious. Some of those you could polish off in a year.
(oops, yeah, sorry, I forgot that in the South they still don't have to be very well qualified to teach)

Answer 3

on average it takes about two years to complete a graduate course, however, if you were to go full time including the summer you can probably complete the degree in 1.5 years...that would be the quickest. ..in response to the guy below, not every high school teacher in the u.s. has a masters, i know many who don't in the state of virginia. and a m.ed and m.a. in teaching are great degrees to have. they are teacher education programs, that are even offered at harvard. don't let anyone discourage you from anything based on their opinon.