Too busy with coursework to do research, can I transfer from CS Masters to a PhD in another school? I just started my Masters in CS at EPFL. I got accepted here with their university wide scholarship as well as a unique opportunity to do research in a lab. My problem is that the course load (typically 7-8 courses per semester) is so much for a Masters degree here that I don't have any time to dedicate to any research. Of course there is the Masters Thesis but that only comes after all course work is finished.  In the mean time I see that the PhD students and other researchers in the lab are working on really interesting stuff and I won't have the time to participate in such work. So I was thinking about just applying directly to PhD programs either at EPFL or ETHZ or in schools in the United States. I wanted to do a Masters to get a better understanding of what exactly I want to research but I have realized that just by picking the research lab here at EPFL I know what field I want to do research in.

I was wondering how common it is for people to apply to PhD programs without completing their Masters studies. How should I explain this in my application, that I am deciding to leave a program? Would it be fine to explain that I am deciding to leave as I want to enter a more research oriented program? How open will admission committees be to that? Will the admission committee be worried that if I decided to leave this Masters program I might decide to leave the PhD program, which I don't intend to?

Any advice in this matter will be helpful. Thanks.
I was wondering how common it is for people to apply to PhD programs without completing their Masters studies. 


In most parts of Europe, students typically have a masters degree on entry to a PhD program.

In the United States, it's quite common in many fields (including CS) for students to enter a PhD program without a masters degree. But if you start a PhD program in the United States without a masters degree, you'll just have to do the coursework that would have been part of a masters degree at the beginning of your PhD. The course load may be a little lighter, but in general, you won't have much time for research during that period, just like your current situation.

(If you enter a PhD program in the US with a masters degree you'll still have to do some additional coursework in many cases, but typically not as much.)

See this answer for more details. 


  Would it be fine to explain that I am deciding to leave as I want to enter a more research oriented program?


It sounds somewhat strange to leave a masters program in which you will have a chance to do research (once you've completed preliminary coursework) because you want to enter a "more research oriented program." In any program you enter, if you haven't taken graduate-level coursework yet, you'll probably have to do some before you can do research full-time.



It's perfectly understandable that you're eager to get started on research - that's a good sign. But you can't just skip your graduate-level coursework entirely - you'll have to take it somewhere, and while you're busy with that you won't have much time for research.

I suggest you try to look at look at your coursework as something that can help you when you finally get to start on your research. The breadth of the classes you're taking will expose you to methods and ideas that you may be able to use in interesting ways in your research. The following advice is really sound:


  What you think is useful or relevant will (probably) keep changing for a while. Everyone is, at some point during their PhD, forced to take some class they really don’t want to take. Over the past few years I walked into quite a few classes thinking they would be irrelevant or even useless. But I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge (and I really should have taken better notes!). Sure, there are classes whose value I still have to figure out (and maybe never will), but there are also classes that surprised me and others whose relevance became apparent many months after I delivered that final paper.