Ask HN: Is it possible to get PhD without completing bachelors

For all practical purposes I doubt it. I suppose there is the occasional genius who is able to obtain credentials without going the traditional route, but from what I've read these sort of situations are highly situational. Y ou can find a few existing threads on the subject with google.

I've heard of people getting into masters programs without and undergrad, often persuading a school too take into account their work experience in a respected field, but it's still not very common.

Also my understanding (I may he wrong) is that a PhD is not about the classes as much as the research you do.

In theory perhaps, but in practice no. To get a phd position at a reputable institution, you have to compete with people who have both Master's degrees and often have published multiple papers. Oh, and getting a phd position is the easy part - finishing it is the difficult one!

I have met one person who did it. Even then they were a certifiable genius, still had to jump through an enormous amount of bureaucracy with an enormous amount of sponsorship from many faculty whos grant funding was directly tied to this person working on their project.

So in practice, no.

If you want to learn more theory, I do think it's possible to apply and get an MS. Especially now since MS programs are bleeding people due to remote learning.

You will need the knowledge which the Bachelor would have taught you. If you've already got that knowledge through other means, to the level that a PhD requires, then actually getting that degree should be pretty trivial. Do it as distance learning, and treat it as a refresher to make sure you're as sharp as you think you are.

Don't listen to anyone here. Just contract some advisors that interest you and see what happens and don't get discouraged. Don't waste your time going through the application process until you have developed a relationship with an advisor and they'd like to have you on. Good luck.

Based on the comments in this thread.

Could someone buy a way into a PhD? Provide funding with a requirement 'x' person must lead or be part of or funding will dryup?

I don't know the system in the US very well, but here in Germany it is already very hard to start an PhD as a bachelor student. One would need high/perfect grades and a supervisor which already supports him/her.

A PhD is not just learning something about theory but also applying theory and creating some new theory. I highly recommend you to start a theory oriented bachelor.

Hello! Math professor in the US here. Maybe, but probably not.

What might be easier to do is to audit a university course. Do you live in a city with a decent university? Find a course that interests you, and for which you think your background would be sufficient. Usually university course schedules are open to the public, and individual professors are easily Googleable. Professors who have personal webpages with lots of recently "cool stuff" tend to be better teachers on average, and also maybe more approachable. (This is, of course, a vague trend, not an ironclad rule.)

Anyway, it's okay to cold-email a professor and ask for permission to audit their course. Keep it brief; introduce yourself, say a sentence or two about your background, a sentence or two about why you find their course interesting. Be prepared to move on to someone else if they say no or don't respond.

If you end up excelling in the course, then this would might further doors for you; the professor might be willing to give you advice as to next steps, or to introduce you to other people who could help you.

Good luck to you!

Stephen Wolfram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram) dropped out of high school and college before getting his PhD.

All it takes is being someone who

* Writes three books on particle physics by the age of 14

* Gets into, then drops out of Eton because of boredom. He instead ...

* Gets into, then drops out of Oxford because of boredom. He instead ...

* Gets into graduate school at Caltech

* Receive a PhD

* Do all of the above by the age of 20

See? Easy!

Despite my sarcasm above, the above shouldn't be (entirely) taken as discouragement. A one-in-a-century genius like Wolfram can do the above before turning 21. It's not impossible that you are the, say, one-in-a-decade genius who can, without being so young, as impendia said impress a professor with your insight. That professor might be able to, in turn, see whether his department's graduate program can admit someone on a non-degree basis (not unusual at all), taking a class or two at a time for a grade but not in a formal program.

If you're not "good enough", you'll likely be able to apply the classes toward a bachelor's degree. If you impress the right people in the right way and if the university does not formally restrict admission to a graduate program to bachelor's degree holders, it's not impossible that you could be formally admitted. Or perhaps a professor will be able to recommend you to a program at a university that does not have such a restriction. There are a lot of "if"s, but it's also not completely impossible.

PS - Yale Law School admitted someone without a bachelor's degree a while back. He was a very successful corporate executive who late in life decided to go to law school and did very well on the LSAT.

Yes. Or at least it was in 1981. tl;dr I was accepted into two Ivy League CS Ph.D. graduate programs with them knowing I wouldn't have a bachelor's when I got there and wouldn't get one.

Longer version. At a "public Ivy" university, I had finished all the requirements for a CS B.S. in three years...except I needed one full semester's course load in, well, anything. Number of hours was all that was between me and a Bachelor's. I checked with a fair number of schools that had "Must have Bachelor's degree or reasonable equivalent" in their catalog, explained my situation, and said I had three professors who knew my situation and would write recommendations for me. Most said "No, but you sound interesting. Try us next year if you don't pull this off". Two Ivies and a Canadian university said I could apply. The Ivies both accepted me and I withdrew my application from the Canadian one before they decided.

Didn't manage to pull off the Ph.D. though; my inexperience at 19 had me not realize it's important to find out about personalities and reputations among faculty for grad school, and it turned out my advisor/dept. chair liked to flush a majority of his students (I was the fifth of my entrance year). It turned out to be relatively simpler to get my graduate hours transferred down to my undergrad school and pick up the Bachelor's that way and then get admitted elsewhere.

Things have changed significantly for graduate CS admissions at good schools in the last 40 years though. Generally you're now expected to have already done some research, and you should have a really positive recommendation from whatever faculty you did that research with/under. I suspect your best approach would be to first get a "professional Master's", but since those usually don't involve research, also get on a research project while there and impress the professor(s) running it.

I got an answer and a non-answer for you.

The answer is in line with most of this thread: possible, yes, probable, no. All cases I know are from people who made enormous contributions to their respective fields before they could enrol in a PhD program.

Most important is my non answer: Why do you want to do a PhD? Just because you want to learn more theoretical compsci? Do you fully understand what a PhD program entails?

I'm not trying to discourage you here, I want you to understand what you would get yourself into before you spend a lot of time, effort and energy, and possibly months/years of your life into something that won't fulfil your life interests.

It is, but good luck finding yourself in that situation. I received an offer during my bachelors which was not contingent on me completing the degree, but it came after a helluva unusual story that I can't repeat here.

Display exceptional creativity and promise in the field in which you're looking to study, attract a lot of attention for it, and then maybe, just maybe.

I would strongly advice against it.

It seems like you are looking at a PhD like "the diploma to have" but not realizing what a PhD is in practice. Read a lot of what a PhD consist in: At least, expect to be lonely and work a whole lot of hours by yourself without much guidance or external motivation, you are becoming the expert during a PhD, so you will not find a lot of people that can help you when you have a problem. (I don't say that good and knowledgeable advisors do not exist! but they also have a lot to do in 24h a day!)

IMO, nothing prevent you from studying after your work like if you are already a PhD student, give it a try: Take any advanced CS theory book or better, a Math book in your area of interest and work it out until you managed to do most of the advanced exercises. If you think this is not a healthy/sane life/work balance.. For a lot of people a PhD is not either. Take your time and be sure to understand everything in the book at its full extent. While you are doing this or after having done a couple of books, take high quality research papers in your field (lots of them are free), and try to understand them, implement them and try to reproduce their results. If you want a PhD in Deep Learning, do not expect that the PhD will consist in implementing a network, testing it, and start again. You may need to understand a lot of information theory, statistics, inference, math theory, etc. Also, for a lot of research level interesting ideas: implementing them is not possible in current frameworks, Expect to make a lot of coding. In any other research areas, usually (advanced) math is still a requirement: P/=NP kind of stuff in computability, graph theory, formal (type) logic (eg look at the rules for the Julia subtyping system[3] pg. 12), game theory (AI), category theory (for functional PhDs), stochastic calculus for finance, etc.. You don't need to know it all, only the part that are relevant to your interest, but still!

This may take month with long days to finish. but..

If you like this experience, you have two choices: 1) You feel that you are ready to do your research on your own, and in that case you don't need a PhD as you can continue to advance by yourself by taking any resources available. 2) You really need the diploma for whatever reason, give a shot at online universities, or try to find fast-tracks to obtain a master degree. Finally find an advisor that is willing to follow you and find funds for your PhD position.

In any case, after the PhD acceptance is where all the difficulties start: You need to study a lot, learn to master rapidly new material even if it is not the material you like, experiment a lot, report results, publish in high impact journals, review papers, read papers, prepare presentations, give presentations, give lectures, give exercise sessions, find fundings, write proposals, manage students, manage several urgent overlapping deadlines, prepare datasets, long hours, poor salary, etc. Don't expect that the PhD is related in any way to a bachelor/master program in my experience.

And don't think this will never apply to you if you find the right advisor, several studies study the link between a PhD and mental illnesses (~30%) [1][2], this is not exactly related to your capacity to work hard but more to the capacity of managing so many sources of anxiety while still being productive and often lonely.

All in all, this can be an extremely amazing experience or the worst experience in your life depending of your personality and ability to manage your time! I didn't write to discourage you to do it, but try in baby steps what it is like to be a PhD and after that decide for yourself. If you are convinced, find good advisors that are willing to follow you or guide you to a fast track that can suit you before applying!

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science&#...

> I don’t have much interest in completing my gen-Ed’s, but I genuinely would like to learn more theoretical math/compsci, and I can only get so far buying used textbooks on eBay.

Most people in academia are pretty big on publishing so it's not terribly hard to find out what everybody is working on. The notion that doing a PhD program will get you access to a lot of otherwise unavailable knowledge is for the most part false. You may just get it a little earlier for your area of specialization.

You can publish and collaborate with others without a PhD or institutional backing too.

If it were to happen, I would expect the requirements to be similar to what's typical for graduate programs that accept people with an unrelated undergraduate degree. Basically, on top of the standard graduate level courses, the individual student takes all the usual undergraduate courses or their equivalent while enrolled as a graduate student.

For random advice from the internet I'd say that getting a bachelor's degree via a conventional route will save you vast amounts of heartache and pain relative to trying to convince a hierarchy of gatekeepers to give you a pass through all the academic and bureaucratic gates you want to skip. There is a 0.0001 probability of passing through ten gates of 50:50 odds and none of the gates you will need to pass through are likely to be 50:50 and the number of gatekeepers is likely to be more than ten.

Or to put it another way, you are describing a goal that is almost entirely out of your control, almost certain to be unachievable, and where persistence is likely to irritate the people who you would need as allies for it to succeed. Though it is logically possible to get a Phd without a bachelors, it is an eminently unreasonable expectation.

The steps to getting a bachelor's degree are enumerable and the there are institutional structures in place to facilitate doing so...and if you start today in a few years you can make one happen. To me, that's a happier plan than one completely outside your control.

In the meantime, you could work your way through Knuth without running out of things to learn from a book. Good luck.

CS Professor here: Depending on the institution, it's possible to get a PhD without an undergrad or meet alternative requirements to get an undergrad along the way.

The trick is you need to get admitted to the program. This is harder but doable. To get into a very good PhD program, you typically need some demonstrable track record of research and/or a letter of recommendation from a professor vouching for your interest/ability/potential. Of course, others do get in just on transcript and test scores, but it's rarer.

You could get a job as a programmer in a research lab and then leverage the relationships from there. Or you could try working with a professor informally (perhaps starting with software engineering for some project) and go from there. Once someone knows you and knows you have interest and aptitude, the lack of an undergrad degree should be solvable for at least some universities.

Finally two pieces of advice: Ph.D.s are supposed to be paid. Not that well (think 25 to 30k a year for a low cost of living area, 45k for say NYC), but if not it's a major red flag. Second, the quality and trust you have in your PhD advisor is way more important than the institution. A Ph.D. is almost an apprenticeship under someone. It goes badly if that person treats you badly

  - had an SV startup background and the professor was interested in spinning them off
  - someone who was friendly with the department and had a sterling reputation went out of their way to pave the way for me
  - had some publications in the field

I'm not sure about the US system, but here in Norway you'd probably have a hard time getting a PhD without a masters degree - but you can get a masters degree without a bachelor degree.

I'm not sure why you'd want to try for a PhD directly - but it might be possible to get into an MSc program?

On a slight tangent, what if you dropped out similarly, went back some years later, improved your grades at the end, but ended up with an undergraduate GPA of slightly < 3.0? What challenges/possibilities would there be in getting into a masters or PhD program after over a decade working? Assuming for the sake of discussion a good GRE score.

Mortimer Adler (1902-2001) recounted in his (first) autobiography:

Nonattendance resulted in a series of F’s on my record. At the end of my senior year in 1923, after I had already been awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key and had paid twenty dollars for my diploma, I received a note from Dean Hawkes saying that I might attend the commencement exercises but that I would not get my bachelor’s degree because I had neither passed my swimming test nor fulfilled the physical education requirement for graduation. Having earned 135 points of credit (120 points sufficed for graduation), I was, however, permitted to enter the graduate school without a B.A. degree. Six years later, without having bothered to stop for an M.A. on the way, I received a Ph.D.—I say “received” rather than “earned” because the doctorate fell on me in spite of myself and what I did or failed to do. How that happened is a story to be reserved until later, but that it happened gives me the rare distinction, I believe, of being possibly the only Ph.D. in the country without a master’s degree, a bachelor’s degree, or even a high school diploma.

This conversation took a big leap from "I want to learn more", into "PhD". If you just want to learn more, forget grad school and go audit the courses you want. There is no need to go through the hassle of any degree if all you want to do is learn, and don't actually have a goal of getting an advanced degree.

Yes! You could approach a Professor at a public university here in the U.S. (like the University of Colorado at Denver in Denver, Colorado) who mentors PhD candidates and explain the kind of on-the-job experience you have relevant to the industry in lieu of a Bachelors degree and request a formal recommendation letter to be included in your application to the PhD program. You will need between 10-20 years of professional experience, preferably team leadership. Although I heard most people are rejected anyways for things that can't be covered on-the-job like knowing how to write a proper academic research paper.

Edit: I just remembered that the measure of success in addition to writing a thesis is being able to explain your argument in as much detail as you can in front of panel of experts while answering their questions for at least a couple of hours up to several hours. Something you will likely encounter trying to convince a mentor you're ready for the PhD program.

In the US, yes, one of my friends did it. He was already working in a lab during high school and had published papers with them before he applied. They were first author at the top conference and he was ridiculously smart and focused on his work. But it's definitely possible. Bit different from your case but should give you some hope.

Another, lower-risk option: at some universities, it's quite possible for undergraduates to take graduate classes, especially if they've had the relevant background. So you could try applying to be an undergrad at such an institution. And you might not need to take that many gen ed. requirements if you find a university with flexible requirements (e.g., google 'open curriculum')

This is likely to be the easiest way to learn more theoretical math-and-CS subjects, though it'll probably be more expensive than just getting into a phd program.

I have no interest in the gen-ed bits myself, but you might take a look at the Coursera/University of London CS degree program. It's a 3 year program if you do it full time and it's entirely CS content.

CS PhDs are normally 4-5 years long. I powered through bachelors to PhD in 7 years (the short duration mostly motivated on keeping costs down). What you are describing is possible. I'm not convinced it is the best idea. A strong CS university undergrad may be 95% redundant, but that 5% matters. I expect your colleagues with degrees might have gotten less from their educations then you might in the same classrooms. We teach a lot more than people actually seem to remember. Don't discount going back for the bachelors. It might be worth it. A lot of your classwork for your PhD will be forcing you to take many of the same classes anyway.