Thinking about BS/MS?

You may be thinking about pursuing the BSCS. If so, make sure you look at their official information here.

 

Below are some things to consider as you are contemplating moving forward.

• The most important thing to remember in this is that you need to be very communicative with your advisor throughout the process.
• So long as you do that, hopefully you can avoid issues.
• Keep in mind that the program is still relatively new and procedures will get updated as a result, and so this is why you should make sure you are communicating with your advisor.

There are many processes by which you can do your due diligence in pursuing the BS/MS. Below is a way that you can feel free to utilize, or come up with your own method. Links are provided for your convenience.

 

1. Review the requirements for BS/MS.  This includes looking at specializations and the Frequently Asked Questions.
2. Communicate with your advisor your intent to pursue BS/MS. Also attend any information sessions and monitor email for any information from advising regarding BS/MS.
3. In degreeworks, save a pdf of you current bachelor’s degree audit.
4. In degreeworks, run a ‘what if’ scenario for your Masters area of interest by doing the following:
   1. On the left hand side, click ‘what if’
   2. In the first set of drop downs under the grey ‘what if’ banner:
      1. change the level to ‘graduate semester’,
      2. the degree to ‘MS in Computer science’,

• and Catalog year to the most recent year.

1. In the second set of drop downs under the grey ‘choose your different areas of study’,
   1. change the ‘major’ field to ‘computer science’ so that it populates the box on the right.
   2. Change the ‘Concentration’ field to ‘MSCS:  ___________(your area of interest here)’ so that it populates the box on the right.

• Once the box on the right contains your major and concentration, then click ‘save pdf’.

5. You should have two (2) PDFs now, one of your bachelors and one of your masters.
6. NOTE: This only applies to the MSCS Course option. This does NOT work for other MS options (like the thesis option) or other Masters degree areas (like cybersecurity).
7. If you are interested in other MS options or other Master’s degree areas in the College of Computing, then you should discuss this with your advisor.
8. Once you have an idea of what courses you may want for BS/MS, check the equivalencies page to make sure that the courses you select do not have undergraduate versions that do not allow duplicate credit. It’s also a good idea to touch base with your advisor at this point confirming you’ve done the above few steps and want to incorporate it into your graduation plan.
9. When you have identified your personal BS/MS path, consider applying for the program per the procedures as outlined on the BS/MS site.
   1. Please keep in mind that waiting to apply can have adverse effects since you lose your biggest resource: time.
   2. You can and are highly encouraged to keep communicating with the advising staff during this process and if your plans change (example: you planned to do BS/MS but Bill Gates from Microsoft personally offered you a million trillion dollars and now you aren’t going to do BS/MS).
10. Note the high level of advisor interaction in this process as that is highly encouraged so as to avoid inaccuracies.

Again, students are encouraged to adopt a BS/MS approach that they are comfortable with and allows them to meet the stipulations required by the program, and are also highly encouraged to receive guidance throughout the process.