Can you do a science PhD with an arts MA if your first degree was science?

Ambitious1999

Bit of a complex story. I’d like to do a PhD or Masters. It’s a quite while since I got a BSc Hons in Biology, a 2:1. Due to the time it’s highly unlikely I’d get on a PhD course and highly unlikely I’d qualify for any kind of studentship to do a masters. I simply can’t afford to pay for a masters degree when even online degrees start at £15,000.

So that’s led me to consider the Open University but they have very few science / biology masters, it’s mainly Psychology and environmental sciences.

So if I did an arts MA like English or history could that be acceptable for entry to a biology based PhD?

(edited 9 months ago)

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

21

If your aim is a bioscience PhD and you've not yet done the masters you would be better off just taking a year out to work and save then doing the masters or PhD.

I'm not sure how this addresses the problem they'd have, which would be your scientific knowledge being rusty, rather than your degree being old per se. You could try speaking to some researchers who you might like to do a PhD with to see what they recommend. It might be that they think you could de-rust with a year of reading, or they could push you towards doing a masters to get you back into the swing of things. Though funding might be a problem: I assume you're aware of the masters loan if you're eligible, and I think even if you think it's unlikely you should give competitive funding sources a go as well.

If you've been working in industry in something relevant to your desired project, there should be no issue at all and your experience may even be an advantage. Even if not, if it helps at all, I know people who have entered masters courses decades after finishing their undergrad. It's really whether your subject knowledge is in the right place.

(edited 9 months ago)

Original post by Ambitious1999

Bit of a complex story. I’d like to do a PhD or Masters. It’s a quite while since I got a BSc Hons in Biology, a 2:1. Due to the time it’s highly unlikely I’d get on a PhD course and highly unlikely I’d qualify for any kind of studentship to do a masters. I simply can’t afford to pay for a masters degree when even online degrees start at £15,000.

So that’s led me to consider the Open University but they have very few science / biology masters, it’s mainly Psychology and environmental sciences.

So if I did an arts MA like English or history could that be acceptable for entry to a biology based PhD?

No, you are misunderstanding the requirements for a PhD. What is important is not your prior qualifications, but your prior knowledge. You could walk into a fully funded PhD in your 30s if you had started as a 16 year old lab tech apprentice and worked your way up in the labs and knew your way around specific research techniques, and proposed a PhD based on that. You can't do a PhD in protein folding based on a Masters in Early Modern History.

Reply 4

mnot

Universities Forum Helper

20

I don’t se the value in a humanities based masters, it would actually make more questions...

Why not try & get a job in research or a paid internship in an academic group (relevant to your area of interest) that way you will build valuable skills that will benefit your PhD applications.

Can you do a science PhD with an arts MA if your first degree was science?

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