In a previous post I talked about the PhD in Mathematical Sciences at UNAM . I write this article to give some continuity and this time dealing with a topic a little more controversial. As it had in the previous post, the graduate in Mathematics, UNAM provides to the master's and doctoral as separate programs. The master is an opportunity to learn mathematics is deeply and learning to doctoral research. This in particular means that the master is only one way to enter the PhD, but not necessary.

This time I want to talk a little about consider going without mastery. I mean, do a PhD directly. I fully understand that sounds very winnowed do that. But humor me a little bit, well maybe not as extreme as it sounds. Rather, the idea is to be clear about the good and bad reasons to do with it and you can send things to the balance.

I think the best way to start with this is seeing some of the reasons usually given for not making a direct PhD and actually see what they are substantiated.

Math Skills

There are a lot of reasons not to do direct PhD arising from reason "I'm not prepared to pursue a doctoral degree." This can mean several things. The reasons in this section help to dissect this. They have to do with skills that must be acquired. They reason that if they use other words, basically mean "study is that if a master, then I can not develop the ability X".

Sure it's important to learn the skill X. And you can learn in master. With regard to these reasons, I just like to mention that the master is not the only way to learn.

Reason 1: I'm gonna miss all the mathematical content mastery

Va, is true. If you're not the kind of analysis expertise, in effect, you will be losing conjecture, propositions, lemmas and corollaries of, say, analysis. A lot of the time-and task class is used to view theory. This is important to 1) learn new things and 2) learning gap filling degree.

Eye: could be easy to say "but this is in the books." Yes, yes, all that is in the books, but the importance of taking the class resides in taking a sequence of threads spun to understand an area of ​​knowledge. The importance of doing this in mastery is that little by little you can determine yourself the knowledge you need to acquire. And look and study on your own. Or, make a study seminar if there are more people interested.

Related Skill: Learn to find the information you need to learn and raise a thread of topics.

Reason 2: I'm going to miss the point of view of the teacher and my classmates

This is also true. Although you see theorems in several sources, is very different to read a good teacher take on the key ideas and will discuss details he has seen. A good teacher not only informs, but also is a good guide and motivator.