Students under this campus-wide mechanism will have up to 12 credits
of graduate courses taken as undergrads transferred to their Master’s program
in the first semester they are Master’s students. These 12 credits are
commonly referred to as double-counted because they are used to meet both
the requirements for the BA degree and the requirements for the MA degree.
This transfer policy works nicely if a student manages to end his/her
BA study with a perfect class schedule, i.e., a class schedule filled with
all remaining courses for the BA including double-counted graduate courses,
no more, no less. However, most students will not be able to have a perfect
class schedule for their last BA semester. In other words, they will have
a partially filled class schedule with a few remaining required courses
for the BA. Although they will likely have the time and desire to start
taking graduate courses for their MA, i.e., graduate courses that are not
used for their BA degree (not double-counted), the current transfer policy
does not allow them to do so in their last BA semester because the limit is
to transfer only the 12 double-counted graduate credits into their MA program.
A real case in point is that a student first takes CSCI 715 (together with
other required undergraduate courses), followed by CSCI 700 and 722 in the
following semester (together with additional required undergraduate courses),
then enrolls in four 700-level CSCI courses in his last BA semester.
One of those four graduate courses is double-counted to complete his
BA degree, the other three are not part of his BA study and are meant for
his MA program. However, the current transfer policy as stated in the
above paragraph will transfer only CSCI 715, 700, 722, and another
double-counted graduate course into his MA program, leaving the other three
in his BA record for no productive purpose.
The CS Department has requested for a more reasonable and student-friendly
transfer policy to transfer up to 12 double-counted graduate credits plus
additional graduate credits that have not been used to meet the
BA requirements, giving students the full flexibility of overlapping their
last BA semester with their first MA semester. This improvement will make
it possible for students to complete 120 credits including 12 double-counted
credits for their BA plus a couple of additional graduate courses by
the end of their last BA semester, then take four more graduate courses in
their first MA semester and earn their MA degree by the end of the
semester – a truly accelerated BA/MA experience for the highly motivated
and most outstanding students.
Financially, it would be fair to both the students and the College for
the 12 double-counted graduate credits to be charged at undergraduate
tuition rate and any additional graduate credits that are meant for the
MA and not used for the BA to be charged at graduate tuition rate.
Our request is consistent with the 6/25/2018 Memo on
4+1 Bachelor’s/Master’s Programs across the University
from the Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost, and the
CUNY Wide “4+1” Bachelor’s/Master’s Program Policy and Implementation Procedures
from the Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost.
These CUNY-wide documents only recommend a limit of up to 12 double-counted
credits, without any restriction on graduate courses that are not
double-counted. In fact, CUNY’s policy even allows students to be admitted
to a CUNY college’s master’s program while they are undergraduates in
another CUNY institution.