UK PhD without a Masters (Electrical Engineering)

International Students
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<p>Hi Everyone,
So sorry if this question is overly commonly discussed, I didn’t immediately see much. I am wondering what my chances of acceptance into Cambridge are straight from undergrad in the US.
The cambridge website states that it is possible, but rare that this may happen – I’m hoping that I would be one of the rare cases, because I’m completing a very specific graduate course sequence in the subject area I wish to study as my depth sequence for undergrad, but I don’t want to delude myself!</p>

<p>I’m a senior at the University of California, San Diego, studying Electrical Engineering. My CGPA is > 3.9, and my major GPA is about 3.9. I did, however, transfer from community college.
I wish to study antenna design and computational E&M, and I have very much specialized my undergraduate through a whole bunch of creative petitioning, I’ve gotten out of most of the general crud, and taken only the classes which are directly applicable to my field of study. Again, I’ll take the 3 course graduate series in Antenna design my school offers this year. (The core, basically, of a graduate degree in radio science at UCSD)
I have a great background in CS, and can provide links to research websites I created, which are currently used by a government national laboratory (brookhaven national lab).
I’m completing an honors thesis Research Thesis in computational E&M. </p>

<p>Ideally, I want to use my research in antenna’s to work in astronomy instrumentation. As such, I completed an undergraduate research project in astronomy, including a conference, paper, and winning a poster contest. Unfortunately this research, however, isn’t directly related to instrumentation… :(</p>

<p>Pretty sure my LOR are excellent. (“She got more done as an extremely busy undergraduate than most of my less committed graduate students”)</p>

<p>Anyway, what do you guys think? I <em>could</em> just tack on one more year to my undergrad and pick up a masters… but if I could, I’d rather just skip to the PhD. Also, do you think the fact I’m already a stretch for admissions makes it less likely I’ll be awarded fellowships, etc? Anyone have any personal experience?</p>

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<p>Well, it really depends on the department/faculty in question. Some subjects almost always require a masters before starting a PhD, some don’t. Engineering is somewhere in the middle, although I’ve met quite a few people who went straight from undergrad (US) to an engineering PhD at Cambridge.</p>

<p>Be as it may, my best bet would be to get in touch with administrators and possible supervisors and discuss the matter with them.</p>