Academic Policies: Dual Graduate Degree Programs

Dual Graduate Degree Programss

Graduate students who are enrolled in a doctoral program in one department/program may enroll concurrently for a master's degree in a related area. Examples would be a doctoral student in PHYS enrolling concurrently for a masters in MATH or a doctoral student in ECON enrolling concurrently for a master's in BGMT.

The following rules govern the dual-enrollment process:

•  The student must be in good academic standing.

•  Both graduate departments/programs must agree to the dual-degree enrollment.

•  The full degree requirements must be met in both programs.

•  The same course cannot be applied to both programs.

•  A written plan for the dual enrollment must be worked out between the two departments/programs regarding credits, advising, semester loads, etc. Copies of this plan must be placed in the student's file in each program and a copy sent to the Graduate School to be included in the student's records here.

Once the written plan is filed with the Graduate School , the student's doctoral program will be designated as the primary degree and the masters program will be designated as the secondary degree. Students and advisors should bear in mind that our present computer system has no way of knowing towards which degree a given course grade should be applied for purposes of computing the GPA. Therefore, students enrolled in dual-degree programs will only have an overall GPA, which reflects their combined performance in the two programs. We are unable to provide separate GPAs for the masters and doctoral components of the two programs. Students therefore should be advised that poor performance in their masters program would affect their overall GPA as it is calculated on their transcript.

Existing Dual Degree Programs

Find information on the following existing dual degree programs on their websites:
The Graduate School  |  2123 Lee Building  |  College Park, MD 20742  |  gradschool@umd.edu      UMCP