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Re:Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life? by tagrun on Monday September 30, 2019 @09:41PM (#21121234)
What exactly isn't true about it? In all institutions that I know all, students are given MSc status as soon as they complete the requirements, not M Phil (never even heard of it).

Some students leave the school after that point, but it doesn't invalidate their MSc, nor their MSc gets converted to M Phil or whatever. It's not a common thing, but I've seen students drop with MSc mostly because of issues with their supervisors (tenured faculty without much incentive to do research at a good pace).

Edit: I looked it up, and apparently, you're making a blanket statement based on a niche practice in a handful of US universities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Philosophy#United_St...

"Although most American universities do not award the MPhil, a few award it under certain circumstances."

Re:Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life? by tagrun on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @08:39AM (#21124650)
And it takes 2 years for most students to meet the MSc requirements (basically they need to complete the coursework), not 4 years, barring some special cases. Again, I'm talking about the common practice, not the handful of exceptional universities in the US you're referring to.