Accelerated Bachelors - Masters Degree Program
This program allows exceptional undergraduate economics students at NC State to obtain a Master of Economics degree (a non-thesis degree) within 12 months of completing the Bachelor's degree or to obtain a Master of Arts in Economics degree or Master of Science in Agricultural and Resource Economics degree (which require a thesis) within 18 months of completing the Bachelor's degree.
The key feature of the program is that students can count up to 12 credit hours of graduate level courses both towards their Bachelor’s degrees (in Economics or Agricultural Business Management) and towards their subsequent Master’s degrees.
A detailed description of the requirements and application
procedure may be found in Section
3.12 of the Graduate Administrators Handbook.
Guidelines
Students in the Bachelor’s program in Economics or Agricultural
Business Management who
have:
- completed a minimum of seventy-five (75) and a maximum of
ninety-six (96)
credit hours in their undergraduate programs, including credits earned from
advanced placement if they started at NCSU - and, if they are transfer students, have completed a minimum
of two semesters as
a full-time student at NC State, a minimum of 24 credit hours, - and have a minimum accumulated grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 at NC State
... may apply for admission to Graduate School and to request permission
to have up to 12 credit hours of
graduate level course work during their senior year count as advanced
placement toward their
Master’s degree.
Such a request must be approved by the directors of both the undergraduate program in which they are enrolled and the Graduate Program in Economics. The directors, in turn, must recommend this course of action to the Graduate School. After the student receives the bachelor’s degree, he or she may be officially admitted into the Master’s Degree program in Economics. After admission to the master's program, the designated courses in which the student earned grades of B or better may be applied toward the requirements of that degree. GREs are not required for admission to the Accelerated Bachelor’s/Master’s program.
Curricula and Course substitutions
View sample four-year plan-of-work course lists:
B.S.
in Economics Degree
B.A.
Economics Degree
B.S.
in Agricultural Business Management Degree
BS in Economics with a Concentration in Business Economics
For each of these, there are restricted electives - generally
taken in the fourth year - that would be
fulfilled by four of the courses generally taken by first-year
master’s
students in economics, as shown below. Graduate courses that
are taken during the student’s
undergraduate program
may not be used as substitutions or replacements for General
Education Requirements
courses.
Course substitutions
Courses to take in the fourth year of undergraduate studies
Fall
- ECG700
- ECG700
- ECG506
- Departmental elective
- economics elective
- ST514
- ST514
- ST514
- free elective (or ST311 or ST350)
- advised elective
Spring
- ECG703
- ECG703
- ECG505
- departmental elective
- economics elective
- ECG561
- ECG561
- ECG561
- departmental elective
- economics elective
...that would fulfill requirements of one of these degrees:
- M.S.. Agricultural and Resource Economics
- M.A., Economics (or Master of Economics, PhD prep track)
- Master of Economics (applied track)
- B.S. Agricultural Business Management
- B.A. or B.S. in Economics
This would leave six remaining courses for completion of the Masters Degree.