Early Entry
Exceptional undergraduate students of ECE may be accepted into the master’s program and begin work toward a graduate degree before completion of the baccalaureate degree. An application for such an early entry may be accepted at any time after completion of 75 or more hours, although it is expected that close to 90 hours will have been earned by the time the first graduate course is taken. These students will have provisional acceptance status, pending the award of the baccalaureate degree.
To be accepted in this program, an undergraduate student must have at least a 3.2 overall GPA and have taken the appropriate graduate standardized test and have earned an acceptable score. If an early-entry student has not met the normal admission requirements of a 2.75 overall undergraduate GPA and a 3.0 junior-senior GPA at the end of his/her baccalaureate degree, she/her will be dismissed from the graduate program. Applicants who currently have a minimum GPA of 3.25 will be eligible to have the GRE requirements waived.
Students accepted into an early entry program will be subject to the same policies that pertain to other matriculated graduate students. Generally, it will be assumed that early-entry students will finish their baccalaureate degree before they complete 15 hours of graduate work. No courses taken before admission to the graduate program may be applied to a graduate degree.
Effective Fall 2022, up to 9 credit hours earned at the graduate level may be substituted for required undergraduate hours. In other words, up to 9 hours of graduate work may be ” double counted” toward both the baccalaureate and graduate degrees. To take advantage of this, an applicant must first apply for M.S.E.E. or M.S.Cp.E. with early entry following the instructions in ApplyYourself (see the Graduate School website), and if admitted, must discuss with the graduate coordinator about double counting of credits.