In another one of the articles written by Mrunal G - he talks about what the difference is between a Phd degree and a MS degree. Every year, many students who want to apply to US univs are not sure which course they should apply for - MS or PhD. There are many advantages and disadvantages in both courses but here is an attempt to help you - the student - to put these in perspective. This will be a 2 part series, the first series will talk about differences overall and the second part will talk about difference in the funding scenario. Here is MrunalG.

When I was in India I often used to think what is a PHD? How different it is from a MS? In this post I try to answer some of the basic questions which occur in any students mind about the difference between a PHD and a MS program.

First of all let me give you a brief background on the type of Universities in US.
Different universities could be categorized broadly as.

1. Universities which are research oriented -
The main focus is research. These universities are very well funded. They are
mostly the top universities and very tough to get into.

2. Universities which are research / commercial oriented -
These universities have main focus on research but they also produce candidates
for job market. Like MS students. But 95% people in here are PHD students.

3. Universities which are commercial oriented -
These universities do not do research. Their main aim is to give students degree.
Most of them do not have PHD programs also.

Now I explain the differences between a MS and a PHD.

1. Duration - The first and most important difference is duration. MS duration is fixed. In most of the universities it is upto 2 years. PHD duration can vary from 5 years to more, depending on the professor, university policy and the research that you are doing.

2. Both MS and PHD candidates have the same course work to do for the first two years. So essentially a PHD candidate also gets a MS degree after the completion of the first 2 years. What differs is the rest 3 or more years which he /she spends on doing research.

3. Coursework - First two years are spent taking different courses which helps the student in his future research work. These courses are related to the work he / she wants to do. There is lot of autonomy in terms of choosing the courses. This is a credit based system. The projects which you do in these courses are sort of mini research oriented. So slowly one starts getting the feel of the research oriented environment.

4. Background - Most of the candidates who appear for PHD have very strong background in research. They would have shown inclination towards research in their previous work. They would have published some papers, have done good work in industry, graduated from a reputed institute. PHD candidates thus show the aptitude for research and getting admit for a PHD program is tougher than getting admit for a MS program. A PHD is sort of commitment from the student. It requires patience, the aptitude towards research.

5. Adviser - Every student works with his adviser. He guides the student initially to identify a problem, find the correct thinking procedure, giving directions, help in giving ideas etc. Slowly as the student matures adviser’s involvement grows less. Student has to find a path on his own, identify problems, work on the solutions, fail, recover. The important part is the procedure of thinking, which the student develops ones he goes through this cycle.

What a PHD teaches is how to think independently. How to identify problems, how to seek solutions. May be that is why the PHD in its full form is called “Doctor Of Philosophy”. So once student has understood the technique, he concentrates on the research work. The ideas on which he is working is termed as a technical paper and it is published in reputed conferences like say for storage systems “FAST”, “USENIX”, , “OSDI”, “RTSS” etc. There are many such conferences depending on the area you are working in. These conferences attract eminent personalities from academia and industry and they judge the quality of your research work. Links for these could be find in one of my earlier posts. Many students start publishing their work as early as in the first year. Many take 2 years or more to get started. It all depends on your previous background, your advisers interests.

6. Research - The standards of quality are very high. No plagiarism is allowed. The research work mainly could be categorized as

6.1 Survey and analysis of existing work and comparison of them -
consider the analysis of the data access patterns in existing storage servers
and how the performance gets affected. what are the observed trends in
accessibility of data in terms of sequential, randomness etc.

6.2 Design of new ideas -
Design of a new file system.

6.3 Tweaking existing ideas into a different form -
How could an existing file system be used on a different device and how it
would affect the performance.

This is a very gross level division. But mainly the work could be split like this.

To be continued in second series.