In general, as soon as you have completed the course requirements (and other requirements, including English Proficiency) for your MS degree, the degree will be awarded. However, it can happen that in the final semester of working towards your MS degree, you take more courses than are required to complete the MS requirements. In this case, any courses not applied towards your MS degree (i.e. not listed on your final Master of Science Degree Program Approval Form) can be applied towards future degrees within the department, most commonly a Ph.D., although Eng.Sc.D. and Professsional Degree are other possibilities.
Note that this can only apply at the level of courses, not individual courses. So if you end up taking one 4.5-credit class along with nine 3-credit classes as your MS program (31.5 credits total), you cannot separate out the extra 1.5 credits and apply them towards a subsequent degree.
There are typically limits on the number of credits that can be transferred between different statuses, but this is rarely an issue if it is only one or two extra classes taken in a single semester.
If you wish to transfer credits earned at Columbia to a degree program in a different school, you will need to check the policy of that school on accepting credits transferred in from outside. Columbia, for instance, is very strict on granting degrees only when 30 credits have been earned within Columbia itself.
Previous: 4.1 What happens if I need to register for 6 credits to complete my degree? Do I still get university housing? - Next: 5.1 What is the difference between CPT and OPT? Can I do CPT as part of my MS program?
Back to Columbia MSEE FAQ index
Generated by build-faq-index on Wed Sep 12 17:45:24 EDT 2007