ersa17 said:
I am also planning to pursue my MS in Physics (specializing in accelerator physics).
Could you share your experience or your current status?? Would love to hear about it.
I know someone who did it and I went to a fair few USPAS courses myself during my graduate studies. The courses vary in quality from decent to very good depending on how many times the instructor has taught at USPAS. Some lessons I learned the hard way, that you might find useful:
1) Networking is just as important as the content of the classes. Talk to the teachers, talk the fellow students, talk to everyone.
2) The compressed schedule means you should treat the problem sets like a test. Don't start on problem 1, read them all, figure out which ones you can do quickly and do them. Then come back and do the harder problems. Don't spin your wheels for too long on a problem either, talk to the teacher, TA, or other students.
3) Do not stay up late doing the homework. My personal rule was at 11 PM I'd start cleaning up the work that I had, so that I could relax for 30-45 minutes before being in bed at midnight. You are going to have to do all of this again tomorrow, get some sleep.
4) Exercise and get out of the hotel once a day. It was very good for my sanity. It doesn't have to be a big thing, but 30 minutes of concentrating on something that isn't course content was great for my morale, mental health, and sleep cycle.
5) The food varies by hotel from terrible to pretty decent. It tends to be pretty heavy, so eat less than you think you want and have snacks on hand to cover.
If you decide to do the project, that is probably the hardest part. The best case for this is if you already work in some accelerator-relevant field and you can convert some task/project that you are already working on into a thesis. Pick something you genuinely want to do. This document is going to summarize your expertise in a narrow area of accelerator physics and, when you go out looking for work, employers are going to expect you to use it to their benefit. Don't just pluck low hanging fruit in the hopes you'll get to do something "better" later, that is a hard row to hoe.
Everyone prioritizes PhDs over masters holders. Because, generally, the PhDs have spent more time learning more things and know more people in the field. At a lab, you will probably end up as a system expert for either an entire system (small, singular systems, say a kicker magnet) or part of a system (larger systems, say the RF chain). My experience at the labs is mostly outside the US, but the group leaders and people with upward mobility all have PhDs. In industry, we preferred PhDs for the above reasons. That doesn't mean we won't call you for an interview, but unless your particular skill is exactly what we need when we need it and we expect to have enough work to keep you busy for a few years doing that, we'll go with the PhD first because we just don't have the head count to have a narrow specialist on staff.
I hope you found that useful.