
Ask HN: Is it possible to get PhD without completing bachelors - throwaway256256
Hello! I have been an employed software engineer for a bit more than 8 years, after dropping out of a traditional bachelors degree program in 2012, due to financial and personal reasons.<p>I have been the “theory guy” in every job I’ve had in the last 6 years, and I would really like to be able to learn more theoretical math-and-computer-science-related subjects, since I am more financially stable and seeing a therapist regularly. I don’t have much interest in completing my gen-Ed’s, but I genuinely would like to learn more theoretical math&#x2F;compsci, and I can only get so far buying used textbooks on eBay.<p>Is it possible to get a graduate degree without a bachelors (in the US)? If anyone here has done that, can you give any advice on how?
======
ianmiers
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

~~~
mrfusion
> try working with a professor informally (perhaps starting with software
> engineering for some project) and go from there.

I’ve been wanting to do this for years. Any tips on how to find a project and
a willing professor? I’ve emailed interesting professors but I’ve never heard
back.

(I was even curious to start a website to match up researchers with volunteer
programmers.)

~~~
ianmiers
Its hard, we get a lot of emails and ignore most of them. You need to find
some interesting insight or question, not "can you work with me." Making me
think about research is a welcome thing. Making me think about managing
people, not so much.

Couple of tricks: try not engaging via email. Twitter works (but again, make
it a stimulating conversation, not a "work work" one). Or if they have code on
github under active development, try contributing there.

~~~
mrfusion
Thanks. I like those ideas. I’ll give it a try.

------
impendia
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!

~~~
tombert
How might that be affected with the recent quarantine orders? Do you know if
it’s possible to audit a “zoom class”?

~~~
codemonkey-zeta
If I was a betting man I would say it will not be possible. The odds of
universities publishing zoom links in light of the zoom bombings[0] seems
pretty low to me. Most likely students will be contacted directly by their
professors/administration with the link(s) for their classes.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoombombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoombombing)

~~~
impendia
The odds of universities publishing zoom links are essentially zero. You might
find individual faculty posting syllabi with Zoom links somewhere online that
anyone can see -- this would likely fly under the radar.

To do this, you would definitely want to contact the professor in advance.
Email addresses for individual faculty are in general published and very easy
to find.

------
gshubert17
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.

~~~
tdeck
Aside: Swimming test? Apparently he went to Columbia, I wonder why they would
have such a requirement.

~~~
steelbrain
Before Air travel became the norm, people used to travel by water, and unless
you know how to swim, you may drown for whatever reason.

The educational institutions didn't want all that effort wasted so they
started requiring swimming education for people.

Or something like that, don't quote me haha

------
auganov
> 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.

------
angarg12
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.

~~~
newen
> All cases I know are from people who made enormous contributions to their
> respective fields before they could enrol in a PhD program.

This is highly dependent on the field and the particular group you work with.
Most PhD students I know came straight from bachelor’s and did maybe a year of
research in undergrad but with no significant contributions, some did actual
research with a group, some have a paper or two published. But yeah, it’s
pretty much impossible to get into a PhD program without a bachelor’s degree.

~~~
geofft
I read that as "All cases I know [of Ph.D. students who did not complete their
bachelors] are...".

~~~
newen
Ah, that makes a lot more sense.

------
bjourne
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!

~~~
rumanator
I would add that if anyone really wants and is capable of enduring a PhD
program and capable of getting said PhD, completing a BA is by far the easiest
and simplest part of the whole process. Thus there is really no reason to
avoid getting those qualifications under your belt.

In the very least you might be forced to waste some part of your PhD program
to learn 101-level stuff just to catch up with your starting point.

------
non-entity
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.

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

That's correct. A PhD is a program that culminates in a candidate being able
to defend a thesis based on his original research when challenged by a jury of
reputable academics.

That's what a PhD boils down to: conduct research that is deemed acceptable
and holds to scrutiny of fellow academics.

In fact, IIRC it's possible to complete a PhD program by having a series of
papers accepted in reputable journals that follow a coherent theme, as long as
they can be used to support a thesis.

------
TMWNN
Stephen Wolfram
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.

------
AndrewDucker
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.

~~~
tdeck
Is that really true though? My school offered the equivalent of CS 101 to CS
grad students, so presumably some came from other disciplines and lacked the
fundamentals.

------
brudgers
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.

------
davidbrennerjr
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.

------
codingdave
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.

------
fgimenez
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.

~~~
s1t5
> Especially now since MS programs are bleeding people due to remote learning.

Can you elaborate on this? Are they just losing students? Why do you think
it's happening?

~~~
woofie11
Paying $40,000 to watch a professor give a dry Powerpoint talk over a box in
Zoom ain't the deal universities think it is.

I can get a better education with a textbook and a Youtube for free, let alone
real online courses.

Universities have neglected teaching-and-learning for the better part of a
century, and with COVID19, it's coming back to bite most of them. For a lot of
programs, enrollment numbers are dead. Professors have viewed teaching as what
they have to do in order to do research, and many approach it with all the
vigor and intellectual rigor that entails. You show up. You talk at students
for an hour. You hand out last semester's homework. You go back to your real
job. Anything beyond that, you hire someone for near-minimum-wage to do for
you -- a graduate student who doesn't want to be there, or an instructional
designer who can barely tie their own shoelaces (note: there are some really
good IDs; just not at most universities. No one qualified would work at that
salary or position in the social pecking order).

Universities which have strongly invested in online, blended, virtual, and
pedagogy are surging, though. Why would I pay a $40k tuition when I can get GA
Tech, ASU, SNHU, or what not which give better quality education for a
fraction of the cost?

------
mixermachine
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.

------
grolm
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.

------
perl4ever
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.

------
catsarebetter
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.

------
e12e
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?

~~~
cozzyd
In the US you typically pay for masters programs but not for PhD. (And most if
not all PhD programs don't require a masters degree. Sometimes a masters
degree is given during the PhD, depending on the school).

~~~
e12e
Oh, so it's typical to go from bachelor's to _either_ master's or PhD, then?

Sounds a bit odd from a Norwegian perspective - our former (German modelled)
cand.mag + cand.scient was a bit like integrated master's + PhD - although we
also had a PhD which was more like a post doc (depending a bit on subject - a
medical doctor had a pretty "conventional" path without much research). The
old cand.scient. was 2 years of mostly research.

We do, of course, generally not pay for college over here, so it's a bit
difficult to compare in terms of "cost" \- but PhD is generally a salaried
position.

These days it's normally bachelor's > master's > PhD - which are 3.5, 2 and 2
years respectively iirc.

Ed: it's not uncommon for an employer to fund a master's degree though -
especially one based on experience rather than a straight bachelor degree. Eg
you might write a compiler for a custom language, or do some machine learning
or ux research as a masters while an employer pay for the work.

~~~
cozzyd
Yes, the European model of master's + shorter PhD is different from the US
model of a longer PhD. There might be exceptions in less sciency disciplines
(e.g. social work or public policy).

And yeah, PhD programs in the US are typically funded (no tuition, stipend
usually enough to cover cost of living) while Master's programs usually are
considered cash cows for universities. Of course there are indeed people who
get a Master's and then a PhD (sometimes because they're not sure they want to
do a PhD, sometimes because getting a Master's might help someone get into a
better PhD program than they would have otherwise).

------
leoh
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.

~~~
impendia
I'm a professor at a PhD-granting math department. I wish I could endorse this
comment, but unfortunately it's incorrect.

In general I'm not available to "develop a relationship" with people outside
the system, and with no apparent credentials. I have too many demands on my
time, so I prioritize developing relationships with students enrolled at my
university.

The one exception is if someone were to bring a genuinely useful idea to my
attention. If someone had a good idea for improving the error terms in the
Davenport-Heilbronn theorem, clearly understood the related literature, and
brought this to my attention -- then I'd cheerfully work with them, even if
they were an unemployed high-school dropout. But in practice this does not
happen.

I also am happy to answer questions about our graduate program, or my
discipline, from strangers. For example if a stranger wrote and asked "How can
I best learn analytic number theory" then I would answer them. But for people
who seek out some sort of advisor relationship, then all I can really do is to
encourage them to apply to our PhD program.

~~~
woofie11
> If someone had a good idea for improving the error terms in the Davenport-
> Heilbronn theorem, clearly understood the related literature, and brought
> this to my attention -- then I'd cheerfully work with them, even if they
> were an unemployed high-school dropout. But in practice this does not
> happen.

Yes, it does. That's the exact approach I used to get into grad school, and
what I encourage others to do. Find a professor you like. Read their
literature and get up-to-speed on their field. Engage with them around their
work.

It's rare for people to do this, but it works. Sometimes you might need to do
this with 2-3 professors to find one who is hiring grad students that semester
(and be careful about programs where one professor can't hire but students are
brought into a program), but it's a much better approach than spending a
decade optimizing to GPAs, GREs, and what-not.

When someone does this, professors can have complete confidence the candidate
can do the work, since they already are...

~~~
impendia
Can I ask what field you're in?

In mathematics in the US, "hiring grad students that semester" is not a common
thing, and "programs where one professor can't hire but students are brought
into a program" describes every program of which I'm aware.

But, I stand corrected that my experience doesn't generalize as extensively as
I had imagined.

~~~
woofie11
I'm in electronic engineering, but most of the experience is from computer
science departments.

There are programs like Caltech where students do rotations and aren't
admitted into a lab. But for example, at the MIT Media Lab, a professor can
explicitly pull in a student for their group (and it's bloody hard to switch,
if there's an advisor-advisee conflict).

And some departments are a hybrid, where a professor can pull someone in by
writing an appropriate recommendation note to the admissions committee. If a
professor says in a rec "I've worked with Alice for the past few months. If
you admit Alice, we have a project defined together, and I have funding to pay
for it," that's more-or-less an automatic admit, barring exceptional
circumstances.

~~~
impendia
Interesting.

My guess is that in EE and laboratory-based CS, professors have a lot of work
that they can readily farm out to people working under their supervision. This
is less true in math, where it typically requires a big effort to get a
student up to speed.

------
blamestross
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.

------
qwrshr
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.

------
gumby
You could just follow Ed Fredkin’s path and skip all the degrees and go
straight to professor. I’ve been told he endowed a chair and then named
himself the first recipient but I’ve been afraid to ask him (seems rude to ask
if that is just a mean story. But great to ask if it was a clever hack).

In any case, however he came to become a professor, he was a good choice:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin)

------
cweagans
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.

------
ketanmaheshwari
Not a direct answer but you will probably get more answers on academia
stackexchange:
[https://academia.stackexchange.com](https://academia.stackexchange.com)

------
wolco
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?

~~~
mixermachine
Money opens some doors, yes, but this will be large sums of money. Not
something like 1 000 dollars. Add two or three zeros. This also won't pass
unnoted. If somebody in the future wants to find out how the PhD was achieved,
he/she will find out.

------
somethingsome
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/article/abs/pii/S00487...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733317300422)

[2]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03489-1](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03489-1)

[3]
[http://janvitek.org/pubs/oopsla18a.pdf](http://janvitek.org/pubs/oopsla18a.pdf)

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vrildox
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.

