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JoshuaFox comments on Grad Student Advice Repository - Less Wrong
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OK, assuming that those criteria are satisfied, then you can start the PhD and drop out with an MA -- which is paid for, unlike most MA's.
Where I got my PhD, you could drop out after one year, simply having completed the courses of that year, and you'd get the MA.
If you're in a top program in physics or similar hard sciences, you can use this approach as a stepping stone to finance jobs.
This is true for my program too, although one year wasn't enough time for me to figure out other things I wanted to do.
I hear this regularly, but I still don't understand how it works. Does this come from networking that happens at top schools, or are there finance companies actively recruiting PhDs? What qualifies as a "top program"? A department well respected in the field or a university famous for other reasons? Is a famous adviser at a poorly-known school better or worse than the reverse?
I am not familiar with the details myself, but I understand that the top schools would include MIT, Harvard, and maybe 4 or 5 more. Physics is apparently the top program for this, though math and others might qualify.
Also, I read that the demand for physicists etc. has gone down, now that Wall Street has realized what math is actually needed to be a quant. The math is pretty simple, and can be learned specifically for the purpose rather than in a PhD program.