The College of Arts and Science (CAS) and the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) offer students the opportunity to earn both the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in a shorter period of time and at less cost than is normally the case. Qualifying students are typically accepted toward the end of their sophomore year or during their junior year. Students in CAS may apply to the program once they have completed a minimum of 48 credits toward the bachelor's degree, but not more than 96 credits, and prior to their final two semesters. To be eligible, students must have a minimum of two semesters remaining in CAS during which they are still working towards completion of undergraduate requirements. The minimum GPA requirement for admission to and continuation in the program is 3.0.
Students, once admitted to the accelerated program, take two graduate-level Biology courses (8 of 36 credits required for the Master's degree) in their final year in CAS, which will be applied to their Master's degree (but do not also count toward the Bachelor's degree). After graduation in May from CAS, students are eligible for a tuition scholarship covering 50% of the credits required for the Master's portion of the program, and can choose to matriculate into GSAS in the subsequent summer or fall term. In the first case, the 12-month scholarship would run from the summer through the following spring; in the second, it would run from the fall through the following summer. Please visit the CAS Bachelor's-Master's website for additional information about the accelerated program. Please visit M.S. in Biology for additional information about the Master’s in Biology program and requirements.
Example graduate-level Biology courses (only 1000-level courses are open to CAS undergraduate students):
- BIOL-GA 1001 Bio Core I: Molecular Systems
- BIOL-GA 1002 Bio Core II: Cellular Systems
- BIOL-GA 1004 Environmental Health
- BIOL-GA.1006 Toxicology
- BIOL-GA 1007 Programming for Biologists
- BIOL-GA 1009 Biological Databases & Datamining
- BIOL-GA 1011 Advanced Immunology
- BIOL-GA 1023 Hot Topics in Infectious Diseases
- BIOL-GA 1122 Lab in Molecular Biology 1
- BIOL-GA 1123 Lab in Molecular Biology 2
- BIOL-GA 1127 Bioinformatics & Genomes
- BIOL-GA 1128 Systems Biology
- BIOL-GA 1129 Evolutionary Genetics & Genomics
- BIOL-GA 1031 Special Topics in Physiology
- BIOL-GA 1051 Cell Biology
- BIOL-GA 1080 Animal Virology
- BIOL-GA.1101 Neuronal Plasticity
- BIOL-GA 1130 Applied Genomics: Intro to Bioinformatics & Network Modeling
- BIOL-GA 1131 Biophysical Modeling of Cells & Populations
- BIOL-GA 2012 Genomics and Global Public Health
- BIOL-GA 2030 Statistics in Biology
- BIOL-GA 2310 Principles of Toxicology
- BIOL-GA 3304 Research
- BIOL-GA 3305 Reading