How would you handle this?

My view is to wonder if its worth having each player create two characters and select one to be put up to Knight level with the proviso that each player is running the Master of another player character.

So one player is running a padawan of another PC and the Master of another PC's Padawan, then you run a short opening revealing their encounter with Order 66 and see where they want to go after finishing that game.

Some characters might be killed off and you might end up with a PC or two running Knight level characters but nothing says each game they run the same character so you could start the game with two Force Users heading to a meeting with the others aboard a ship run by a Smuggler (or someone else) played by one of the other PCs with the others running crewmembers or other passengers.

If and when you do have them all meet up allow their spare characters to not get involved until plot gets them involved but I was wondering how this would go over... would this work for you?

And what would you suggest instead?

Right now because of various events the whole party is Force Sensitive however we have two padawans, two masters (although I'm amused because my Padawan has three times the Force Rating of one of the "Masters") and the fifth member drank from a Force Nexus and is Force Sensitive but I don't think has done much with it yet and runs a pretty good Bothan Spy.

It works perfectly fine. We have me using Force Move aggressively, Two Lightsaber based people, and my Master is very Force Heal/Medicine based with him recently picking up Force Protect.

My party is a bunch of college students from the Taipani sector. They just have a few class projects from their Philosophy teacher ...

I've run it several ways. I will say the whole "This guy at Knight Level and that guy at starter" isn't cool unless it's the player's idea. It sounds good, but the "padawan" tends to play second fiddle (in a bad way) to the Master.

Better solution is to have both be Knight level and the Master/Apprentice part be narrative. If you really must have the master be different a free rank or two in a Knowledge:Stuff skill is usually enough.

And since I know it's coming: Don't get hung up on FRs. If you actually watch the films you'll see that nearly all the obvious force usage is FR1 stuff. The whole "Oh, but I need FR 300 for reliability".... that's what the calling on darkside mechanic is there for.

I've run it several ways. I will say the whole "This guy at Knight Level and that guy at starter" isn't cool unless it's the player's idea. It sounds good, but the "padawan" tends to play second fiddle (in a bad way) to the Master.

Better solution is to have both be Knight level and the Master/Apprentice part be narrative. If you really must have the master be different a free rank or two in a Knowledge:Stuff skill is usually enough.

The Master can be very rusty. In order to survive the Jedi purge, he willfully cut himself off from the Force to some extent, and now he must "get back on the bantha." That's a great story by itself. Cue the "I'm too old for this ****!" quips once the action starts.

A Master can start at Knight level, but recieves substantially less XP until everyone else catches up. I'm actually trying this out in-game soonish.

Combination of the above: +50 or +100XP can go a long way, and everyone will even-out all the sooner.

Personally, I'd love to play a Jolee Bindo styled FSExile/Niman-Disciple as the Mentor option incarnate, but probably couldn't pull it off with just the starting XP...

Would they be against a Niman Disciple/ something else maybe a scoundrel and simply appear to be a FS/Exile?

In our game, all the players are Force Sensitive. Some have a direct connection through a relative or loved one to the Jedi Order. Others just have strange abilities they've never fully understood.

Before our first session last night, the PCs brainstormed a past event where they were all on Naboo and one or two of them were being pursued by an Inquisitor, and they all worked together to escape the planet. Now they adventure together.

In my game, 2 are not Force Sensitive while the other 4 are. The Master Padawan thing I brought up to them at the beginning, but a couple players whined about starting at start while 2 got to start at knight level. Ultimately what happened was the Force sensitives decided on a mentor force spirit of a Jedi Master that saved them from order 66 while they were younglings and has returned to continue their training. (With one of the players having a 40 year old Cerean that wrote up in his background that he attempted to fight off Master Skywalker while he was killing the younglings in the temple, and the Jedi Master, now Force Spirit, saved him and escaped into hiding)

I don't understand why you would start some at knight level but not others. The Knights will dominate most scenes, and one of the biggest challenges for a GM is making sure every player gets to do theire bit. Well done, you just made your job 10 times harder...

Hint - what works in a film don't always work in a game...

I started my game with all my PCs captured by the Inquisitorius and spent the first session escaping from their prison ship.

All PCs were starting characters.

I'm running a FaD group as well, and the initial four all began as staring level characters, with the fifth player starting out just a bit below the rest in terms of XP earned.

I'd say having a couple PCs begin at Knight-level and the rest at the regular starting level is a recipe for disaster. The PCs that are at the lower XP level are going to start wondering "Why are they even along when these more advanced PCs can handle most of the situations just fine without us?" The accelerated XP awards like Lorne suggested might help, but there's still going to be that gap at the beginning, and you might even have the players of the Knight-level PCs wondering why they don't get any kind of extra XP award since they're being put in the same risky situations as the other PCs (a fallacy to be sure, but that doesn't mean the thought won't cross their minds).