Whois & Analysis for american-writers.org

A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD or Ph.D.; Latin) is the highest academic degree awarded by universities in most countries.

PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields.

The completion of a PhD is often a requirement for employment as a university professor, researcher, or scientist in many fields.

Individuals who have earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree may, in most jurisdictions, use the title Doctor (often abbreviated "Dr") or, in non-English speaking countries, variants such as "Dr. Phil." with their name, and may use post-nominal letters such as "Ph.D.", "PhD" (depending on the awarding institute).

A graduate school (sometimes shortened as grad school) is a school that awards advanced academic degrees (i.e. master's and doctoral degrees) with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate (bachelor's) degree with a high grade point average.

A distinction is typically made between graduate schools (where courses of study vary in the degree to which they provide training for a particular profession) and professional schools, which offer specialized advanced degrees in professional fields such as medicine, nursing, business, engineering, speech-language pathology, or law.

The distinction between graduate schools and professional schools is not absolute, as various professional schools offer graduate degrees and vice versa.

A thesis or dissertation is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.

In some contexts, the word "thesis" or a cognate is used for part of a bachelor's or master's course, while "dissertation" is normally applied to a doctorate, while in other contexts, the reverse is true.

The term graduate thesis is sometimes used to refer to both master's theses and doctoral dissertations.

Postgraduate education, or graduate education in North America, involves learning and studying for academic or professional degrees, academic or professional certificates, academic or professional diplomas, or other qualifications for which a first or bachelor's degree generally is required, and it is normally considered to be part of higher education.

In North America, this level is generally referred to as graduate school (or sometimes colloquially as grad school).

An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument — but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story.

Essays have traditionally been sub-classified as formal and informal.

Formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.