Accelerated Degree
When you finally receive your undergraduate diploma, what will be your first goal? Isn't it to immediately get a job? While the idea of earning a master's degree sounds good, and you, in fact, have a strong intention of getting one, your urgent concern after school is to be financially independent. Therefore, without much thought, you will probably postpone your plan of attending graduate school until everything works out fine. This option, of course, is okay, and realistically, many have chosen this kind of road. The only question is, why wait when you can actually take a master's degree while earning your undergraduate course?
Accelerated Degree: A Fast Track to a Master's Degree
There are several schools today that offer accelerated degrees to deserving students. Normally taken within five years, an accelerated degree allows the students to complete their undergraduate studies and start taking up the master degrees of their choice at the same time, specifically in their senior years. (1) Once a particular student has successfully accomplished his bachelor's degree, he will then automatically proceed to his graduate program. To fast track the entire process, an accelerated degree can use credits of graduate coursework-usually 6-for the completion of both the undergraduate and graduate studies. (2) All these, of course, lead to one important thing: pursuing advanced education in a faster pace. Therefore, students would have the chance to spend much of their after-school lives in building lucrative careers instead of allotting another two years for a master's degree.
There are, of course, some rules to be followed in admitting a student to the accelerated degree program. Most schools actually accept applicants with satisfactory GPA: 3.5 or even higher. They also require the applicants to submit all the necessary documents.
Accelerated Degree Options
Most accelerated degree students choose to take the equivalent masters degree programs of their undergraduate courses. This means that if a particular student is taking BS Psychology, he would pursue Masters in Psychology. But others, especially now that several schools have opened combined programs, take masters program different from their bachelor's degree course. These combined programs therefore give the students more privileges to explore other disciplines.
Literary Citations & Article References:
1) http://www.gmu.edu/departments/english/linguistics/accelerated.html