In the semester in which the undergraduate degree requirements will be completed, IUG students must activate their undergraduate intent to graduate, and the undergraduate degree should be conferred at the next appropriate Commencement.
- Course work counted toward both undergraduate and graduate degree requirements cannot be independent study. A minimum of 50 percent of the courses proposed to count for both degrees must be at the ECON500 or ECON800 level.
- the graduate thesis or other graduate culminating/capstone experience (including any associated credits and/or deliverables) may not be double counted towards any other graduate degree requirement. If the thesis or culminating/capstone experience is recognized as meeting requirements for the undergraduate degree, it will not be recognized and cannot be used to meet requirements for the graduate degree.
- the first year in the graduate sequence of the IUG program is devoted to 18 credits of the core courses in micro, macro, and econometrics. The second year follows with at least 12 additional credits, 6 credits of which will be in a year-long course for the M.A. project. The M.A. project will provide hands-on experience of research supervised by our excellent faculty.
A non-IUG student seeking a B.A. or B.S. would complete 120 credit hours of undergraduate instruction averaging 15 credits (or 5 courses) per semester over a typical 4-year period.
In contrast, a student undertaking the IUG program must complete 30 credit hours of graduate instruction towards the M.A. degree in addition to the 120 credit hours of undergraduate instruction. Of the 30 M.A. credit hours, 12 may be double counted towards the undergraduate degree program requirements. Since all undergraduate degree requirements must be completed by the end of Year 4. IUG students may count up to 12 credits of the 18 credits of the required graduate classes taken during the first year of the MA program toward their undergraduate degree. These credits could fulfill ECON400-level course requirements for the B.A. or B.S. degrees and/or honors credit requirements.
In summary, an IUG student would need to complete at least 108 credit hours of undergraduate instruction averaging 18 credits (or 6 courses) per semester by the end of 3 years of undergraduate study. The remaining 12 credits that are necessary for the total of 120 credit hours for the completion of the undergraduate degree can come from courses that can be double counted for both the undergraduate and graduate degrees. These can be earned in the 4th year of study, which also corresponds with the first year of graduate study, when the student would be taking 18 credits of ECON500-level courses in graduate instruction.