About PhD (Doctor of Philosophy)
Doctor of Philosophy or PhD is a specialized research program which is highly reputed in all educational fields. If you gained a PhD degree then you are the “Doctorate” in your course of study, this means that you have pushed the existing limits of the theory about your course of study and you have added something new to the existing pool of knowledge of your course of study. You have returned a new theory by adding some additional outputs to the remaining world on that topic after a lot of hard work and applying all your knowledge in a right direction, so that you make yourself able to evolve a new theory. This is a post graduate doctorate degree. You have to write down a thesis on the topic you have chosen to research for, your research work all the tests, observations, applications, inputs, outputs and results have to be written down on papers, all these papers which contain all your examinations are known as thesis. The thesis has to be twenty thousand words long at least, it could vary from your topic to topic, in some topics you have to write more may be around forty thousand words or may be about eighty thousand words.
Eligibility
If you are looking for a PhD degree then you have to be a masters or post graduate in your course of study there after you have to do M Phil which is usually known as a pre requisite for doing a PhD. But in some universities or institutes you can pursue PhD just after your post graduation, this is possible because you have to clear an entrance exam conducted by those universities and institutes mutually or independently. But still in most of the universities and institutes you have to clear M Phil before pursuing PhD.
About M Phil (Master of Philosophy)
Master of Philosophy or M Phil is also a specialized research program but it’s not equivalent to PhD because after gaining M Phil you will not gain the degree of “Doctorate”,you will be the masters in your course of study. Here you have to do all those things that you will do later during your PhD, you have to choose a topic or course of study that you are going to research for, here also you have to write down a thesis on your all research done on your course of study. This is a post graduate research degree. It is different from PhD because here you don’t have to explore anything new or any addition to the existing pool of knowledge, instead of that you have to prove the already approved methodologies of current knowledge in your course of study, you have to prove them by using right techniques and application of all your knowledge, so that you can prove that already proven methodologies, but you have to keep one thing in mind that all your techniques and methods has to be acceptable otherwise all your research work will be rejected.
Eligibility
If you are looking to do M Phil then you have to be a post graduate in your field that you are aiming to research. After this course if you plan for PhD then the things will be much easier in comparison to those students who are doing PhD after clearing the entrance exam for PhD just after their post graduation, because M Phil is also consists of research work.
Key Difference
- PhD is a post graduate doctorate program while M Phil is a post graduate research program.
- In PhD you have to explore anything new and unique for this world while on the other hand in M Phil you have to prove those already proven methodologies.
- After PhD you will be “Doctorate” while after M Phil you will be “Masters”.
Conclusion
Both the degree programs are related to research programs, both the programs helps you to explore yourself to a new level, both the courses helped you to explore the existing knowledge and that results to something totally new. So, if you are looking to go for any of these programs then you have to go for. Best of Luck!