B 21
m 31
Ba @ 36
BA: 22 years 3 months
MLA: 25 years 3 months
ETA: Some are adding later degrees, so – PhD: 42 years 11 months
…and the PhD may very well have wrapped up a few months sooner, were it not for my cumulative time spent on the Dope in the years prior! (But you folks have given me ideas that I’ve used in my teaching and occasionally in my research, not to mention parenting and musical pleasures and much else, so it all evens out).
I am struck by just how many Masters there are here amongst the membership.
BA 21 years 3 months
MS 23 years 8 months
This doesn’t bring back very good memories for me, sorry. However, I will dwell on the improvements in my life since then!
ETA: I would be interested to know how many of these Masters degree people later went on to the PhD. (I did not.)
Bachelor’s 20 years nine months
Master’s 24 years nine months
BA 22
MFA 27
Took 2 years off to work in the middle of grad school.
AB 22 years, 2 months.
MA 33ish. I didn’t go to the ceremony, so I don’t remember exactly when I graduated. I defended my thesis at 32 years and 9 months.
PhD 39 years, 8 months.
That all took a while because I tried a variety of careers before figuring out that grad school might be a good option. I did my MA and PhD while raising 2 young kids (and working off campus during the candidacy stage), so I spent a bit more than 9 years in grad school.
I don’t have an undergrad, just two diplomas:
Diploma in Business Technology - 2000
Diploma in Environmental Management - 2005
M.A. Environment and Management - 2013
The gaps are because after I finished my first diploma in 2000 I started working full time, and continued working full time for my second diploma and M.A. Luckily for me, this was in part because the companies I worked for paid for my education. I also had a bit of burnout between each - it’s hard to work full time while going to school almost full time. :rolleyes:
BA (two): 20 years 8 months
MA: 23 years 8 months
MLS: 33 years 3 months
Oh man, posted before coffee - with ages:
Diploma in Business Technology - 20
Diploma in Environmental Management - 25
M.A. Environment and Management - 33
Yes, but not for the AB. 
The OP didn’t ask, but I also got a PhD when I was just shy of 38.
In my case, the gap between the undergrad and grad degrees was due to a finite attention span. When I finished my undergrad, I’d been in school for sixteen years and I wanted to do something - anything - else.
I started out working in municipal/commercial/industrial construction, at a company that got me involved in every phase from design to completion. At the beginning it was great to be constantly learning new things, but I got bored after a few years. I changed fields completely, going to a conservation district and working on environmental/agricultural projects. After a couple of years there, I started consulting on my own… but the consulting work that reliably paid the bills was boring as hell. So I went back to school.
I was a much better grad student at 32 than I would have been at 22, in no small part because of that work experience. The drawback is that I’m about 10 years behind a lot of my professional peers on our current career paths, but I don’t have any regrets.
But we’re all imperfect. Except for one of us.
BS: 24 years, 3 months
MBA: 31 years, 3 months.
MS: 32 years, 3 months. (dual-degree program with the MBA; required like 16 extra hours)
Looks to me like there are 2 main groups- the ones who more or less stayed in school and got the Master’s/PhD right after the Bachelors, and the people who were out of school 5-10 years before deciding to go back for a postgraduate degree.
For me, A.B. from Princeton and A.M. from Chicago.
BSc: 23
MSc: 27
I took a couple of years off between my degrees to figure out what I wanted to do, which turned out to be a very good idea indeed. I’m now 36 and wondering whether this is the time to go back to do a PhD, and it’s encouraging to see how many other people did graduate study later in life.
Some programmes take a year, some longer. My Masters was 50% taught with exams and 50% thesis and was all done in about fifteen months.
BSc: 22y 0m
MSc: 23y 3m