is this gonna be some kind of amazing story attached here?

Sure, it’s possible, but you better be damn good.

Why, he can graduate this way even in three years (and then be done with his postdoc in one more year) – in Europe. You forgot to mention the 3 months of summer break and 3 weeks in the winter and one week in the spring…

easily… I probably averaged 40 hours a week for 3 years and have a PhD. (sometimes more hours a week, sometimes less).

perhaps it is different in Organic chemistry (and probably this is the cause of my healthy disrespect for the field), but in my field its not about how many experiments you do, its about what experiments you do…

I heard the rule was 6 reactions and 4 columns a day for organic chemists.

Wait, we’re talking about a meth lab ain’t we?

….depends on what you consider “earn” a PhD means.

If you think it is about “having completed the natural product synthesis” , then maybe 5 years is not enough, but if it’s about reaching a standard of advanced knowledge, practical and analytical skills, independence etc then you can tell this after 3 years at 40 h pw.

There is a proportion of PhD-grant awarding bodies in the UK that see doctoral studies as “research training” first and foremost. The quality and quantity of work, in the thesis, and the defence, simply determines how easily you can justify to an external assessor(s) of having reached aformentioned goals.

For some people 40h pw for 3 years is OK, others may need 4. Sure, the advisors are happier squeezing some more cheap manpower and papers out of a grad student over a couple of years extra, but after 3 years we all know whether a student is worthy (and will get) a PhD or not.

1) My advisor didn’t care about how much time you spent in the lab for the most part (unless you say, came in on Wednesdays only) – he just cared about results. If you could get decent results working 40 h/week, he probably would not have cared if your work was good. Of course, that was in organic/physical chem – I don’t think it would fly so well in synthetic groups, where it seemed like working your students to the nubs was a requirement (both from advisors and peers).

2) I spent lots of time in lab, but part of my problem was my lack of efficiency with the time I did spend. I didn’t multitask effectively (partly mental, partly laziness), and I did lots of things that weren’t directly productive. I don’t think people in industry work 40 h weeks (even at big companies, not startups or smaller companies) for the most part, but they don’t pride themselves on ridiculous hours – they just need results. Being efficient with your time would mean that less of it would be necessary to be successful.

I was actually banking on this being the case.

The boss’s perspective seems to be that you need to do the work, regardless of what the hours are. 40 hours seems to be the minimum, but I would think that you can get by with 45-55 hours a week and be pretty productive. You can spend 70 hours a week “in lab” and do many of the things (web surfing, eating, sleeping, etc.) you would do at home to take up a good portion of those hours.

Let’s hope that a PhD on 40 hours a week is possible, or else I’m not getting one…

40 hrs/week is fine. but in 5 years??

Discover something phat and they’ll let you leave after paying sufficient tuition and fees. You won’t get credit for the discovery – PI’s fiefdom – but you do earn the ineffable delight of being screwed again as a post-doc. Both are good training for being screwed by tenure or being fungible in industry.

When the ship sinks the only crew guaranteed to drown are those chained to the oars. Even the fat sweating bastard bangng the drum has a flotation device.

Also depends on what “organic chemistry” means. If it means total synthesis then you would need to be dedicated as hell to accomplish this. But I do know people who did this. They were some of the most organized and disciplined human beings I have met. Most of us are not that way. For us I would say 5.5-6 years would be a comfortable and real possibility. In phys org, organometallic methodology or even materials, I know several people who finished in 4-5 years. There it seems to be easier.

The real problem is this; most of us have trouble focusing on work for every minute that we are in lab and usually get amply distracted by facebook, gossip, food, blogs, Starbucks and sleep. If we truly and really work almost every single minute of an 8 hour day, then I think what you are asking could be possible in any scientific field. I know very few people like that and let me say that I envy them. One of them got comfortably done in 5 years with a wife at home and a baby in his 4th year, strictly working from 9-5 every day excluding weekends.

It all depends on who your advisor is and what kind of person they are. When you select your advisor make sure it is someone who rather look at what results you’ve got, not how much time you’ve put in the lab. A good way to see if someone is result oriented rather than face-time is look at the number of publications they have had in the past 5-8 years, if it’s only one or two, they really aren’t interested in what you do, just that you’re doing it. However, if there are 10+ publications then your advisor is more interested in getting stuff done and want to see what got done, not how long it too.

I would be careful to not confuse time in the lab with productivity.

Just because you spend a lot of time on something does not mean it is important.

I think not only is it possible, it should become the standard. I recently graduated from one of the “hardcore synthetic groups” (other’s words, not mine), and I worked upwards of 65 h/week on average for 5.5 years. By work, I mean I was there-I agree strongly with wavefunction. There were days where I was not distracted from 7am till midnight, but I paid the price for it the next day. Without drugs or a personality complex, I don’t think anyone can do high quality thinking/science that much. I can honestly, honestly say that I now accomplish twice as much in industry working 40 hrs a week, the most startling thing is that I come up with the most fun/productive solutions driving home at night, when there’s a chance for perspective. (I know there are many things in industry-money, no dishes to clean, etc- that makes life easier, but I just am more “ready to go” in the morning.

Of course this will never change, because most “synthetic organic” profs only go by what they know-they got banged on during their PhD and “look where it got them”, so cutting down to only working 40 hrs a week is an experiment they will never run, and they (and we as a synthetic community) are worse off for it. There are portions of the PhD where insane hours need to be worked. And additionally, yes by the third year it is very easy to see who’s got the brains and the stones to make it happen. I was always willing to pay my dues in the 4th year as repayment, but the 5th and beginning of the 6th was pure torture, and not productive at all (in the grand scope of things).

there is a nice review about various dyes used for dye-sensitized microcrystalline titania Solar Cells in the EJOC in print, ASAP

Research is an educated-risk roll of the dice. It is your professor’s guesses (and at some point yours are part of the mix) that determine what probabilities end up happening. .If the syntheses you work on end up behaving as theorized, you win. Then it is readily possible. If not, you keep trying different, less-apparently likely routes or hope someone else’s reactions are applicable. That lengthens the time to six, seven, eight years for the unlucky (or ones who just cannot catch the butterflies of reality with the nets of reactions chosen).

A wild card is the professor who basically has requirements of so many successes or publications as a quota – there are those and some of the big names actually think like this after having had several dozen PhDs come out of their labs.

In addition to everyone else’s comments (especially about hours worked vs. productivity — which I agree with) another factor is how much of a boost you get at the beginning. And luck.

If you are standing on the shoulders of a recently departed lab giant, it can be easy to get lots of results in not much time. If you’re starting a brand-new project, things are often very different.

On top of that, success breeds success — not many people are able to keep pounding out 70-hr weeks in the lab, month after month, when nothing works. A little bit of success at the beginning can really boost your motivation.

I know a woman who had two kids while in grad school (I think it was “slightly bio” org chem) and defended in 5 years. As far as I’m concerned, the kids are doing well and are not twins.

I would suggest yes…
I hope in doing so, but I’m working in Europe in the physical chemistry…

I don’t wanna be all pedantic, but the question should have definitely stated “in the USA”

In the UK and Australia (where I was and currently am respectively) if you took longer than 3.5-4 years over your PhD then people would start thinking you weren’t really up to it. Most funding in these places is only for 3-3.5 years as well.

As for “hours per week” I definitely agree that it’s more about efficiency of time. I am in the lab from 8-6 five days a week, but I spend the first 30-60 mins checking emails, having coffee, etc have an hour for lunch, have a couple of extra coffees throughout the day and usually stop working about 5:30 anyway. I think if I worked the whole time I was here I could get away with doing 9-5 quite easily. I might, however, “burn out” if I did that

Perhaps, if the goal is just to get a PhD and be done with chemistry? I’d like to know their success rates outside of grad school, however. Good post doc position? Going on to an “R1″ position? I doubt it…. (oh, please, everyone, prove me wrong with some examples.) Can anyone *really* get a large enough publishing record from a 40 h work week?

For perspective: students from my former program that complain about having to stay late– defined as past 7 pm– or work weekends make me want to stab them through their nitriles with a very sharp pencil.

I work about 40 hours a week, I started my PhD in 2004 and am now postdocing. I have 5 papers… one in Science. I think that’s ok.

The trouble with the academic world is that there are so many losers who are willing to sacrifice their entire life to chemistry, that it becomes an arms race to see who can give up most of the enjoyments a normal person considers a requirement in their life (relationships, free time, etc.).

I like chemistry but it is still just a job to me, a nice job, but just a job.

I would never work somewhere where I am expected to fo 6 days a week for 12 hours a day or whatever. I have better things to do.

I would be careful to not confuse time in the lab with productivity.
No doubt. I had worked several years as a BS chemist before starting a PhD. A lot of allegedly busy and productive student can still spend an enormous amount of time goofing off.

I like chemistry but it is still just a job to me, a nice job, but just a job.

Yup. “Career” is just “job” with too many letters. I love my job. But that’s what it is.Being a scientist, even an academic with ivy growing out their ass, isn’t a road to secular sainthood, and anyone who thinks it is, is a sucka.