1.  Go to the Grad School website and go to the Admissions section and follow all instructions.
2.  In your “areas of interest” on the form, put “accelerated masters”.  This will signal that you’re applying for the BS/MS

All other application requirements for the BS/MS program are the same as for the MS program in general.  For more on the BS/MS in Chemical Engineering, go to the Advising website FAQ page.

Accelerated Master’s Degree Programs
submitted by Jacque Smith, Graduate School

The Graduate School announces the development of three new accelerated master’s degree programs. These fast-track graduate programs are now offered to undergraduate students in the fields of mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering and chemical engineering.

The new initiative allows Michigan Tech undergraduate students to accelerate their education and jumpstart their future research or career paths.

Tech undergraduate students can apply as early as their junior year and start taking graduate-level courses during their senior year.

Michigan Tech’s accelerated master’s allows for students to count up to six credit hours towards both their bachelor’s and master’s degree. Once students are admitted into the accelerated programs and complete their bachelor’s degree, they can finish their master’s degree within two semesters (one academic year).

Acceptance into these programs requires that students apply through the standard Graduate School application process and maintain undergraduate GPA requirements set by the individual programs. Students who are already enrolled in graduate programs may not retroactively enroll in accelerated master’s programs.

Other academic programs are encouraged to consider offering accelerated master’s options to Tech students.

For more information on developing an accelerated master’s program, contact Jacque Smith, director of marketing and advancement, Graduate School, at 487-1434 or at jacque@mtu.edu .

When you apply to graduate school, you will automatically be considered for support, either in the form of a research assistantship, a teaching assistantship, or a fellowship.  These assistantships will usually include full tuition and fees.  It’s a great deal for which good students will often qualify, and it is not usually based on need, rather is based on merit.  There are also very prestigious graduate research fellowships offered by the National Science Foundation for the best students in the country.  If you are able to obtain an NSF graduate research fellowship, you will be highly courted by all the top graduate schools.  You must apply directly to NSF for these fellowships.

M.S. study in chemical engineering can be done either in coursework mode (never supported; you are charged tuition and fees) or in thesis mode (may be supported; may include a living stipend).  The two-year coursework masters has the advantage of being straightforward to get:  you apply, are admitted, take for the necessary courses, get your degree.  There is no research project.  The M.S. thesis path also starts with you applying and taking courses, but students are working from the beginning on a masters thesis that must be completed before the degree is awarded.  There are funded research projects that lead to the M.S., and it is competitive to obtain this funding.

For more on graduate school, please visit the Department’s website on graduate studies.

Students may hesitate to attend seminars that they fear they will not understand.  Although the material may at times go over your head, will the situation be any different in a year or two when you start graduate school?  You can learn from attending seminars, even if they go over your head.  You can learn about effective presentation techniques (and ineffective techniques) and you can learn about research areas that you would never have had a chance to explore otherwise.  And you can learn what you need to study in order to understand.  If the visitor is a faculty member, he/she is probably interested in talking to juniors and seniors who are considering graduate school in the hopes that they can recruit you to their program.  If you are particularly interested in a speaker’s talk, you can ask to meet with him/her later in the day.

Participate in undergraduate research.  Click here for more on undergraduate research.

Improve your writing and presenting skills.  Writing and presenting well are really reflections of how logically you think.  If you can explain a topic well in writing or orally, you are displaying an important thinking skill you will need in graduate school.

Engineers sometimes distain writing as a soft skill that is less important than analytical skills.  It is not.  Writing well is an important skill that can make or break your graduate school experience.  That last task of writing your thesis or dissertation and writing up the publications from your work is critical – you will not graduate without your final thesis/dissertation being written and approved, and usually these documents are held to a very high standard of organization and grammar.  Do what you can now to improve your writing by taking writing-intensive courses, writing in your extracurricular activities, and availing yourself of the help provided by the Department of Humanities’ Writing Center.  I also recommend reading as an activity that promotes writing.  Read for pleasure – novels, literature, plays, quality magazines, and quality newspapers.  Reading is an excellent way to improve your recognition of good writing and of good grammar.

Oral communication is equally important.  Learn to make effective presentations and practice what you have learned.  Attend seminars and note down techniques that you find effective at getting the point across to you and then use those techniques in your own presentations.  Solicit feedback on your presentations so that you can improve.  Also, take the time to learn to present yourself well in day-to-day situations.  When you call someone on the phone, always identify yourself and find out right away if they have time for the discussion you would like to have with them.  The same goes for when you come to someone’s office door – identify yourself and make sure that they have time to see you.  In email, always start your messages with a greeting of some sort (Dear xxx or Good Morning or something equivalent) and state your point and sign off politely with your name and contact information.  These little habits can also be important in your graduate studies (as well as in life) since you will need to interact with many people to complete your graduate research, and if you do not interact well, your road will be very rough.

Don’t sell back your books.  You will be buying new books in graduate school, but you will often find that you need to refresh your memory of your undergraduate studies.

Another possible class to take would be CM 5500 Theory and Methods of Research (2cr, Fall).  This course is required of CM graduate students and teaches advanced technical communications as well as covering the ins and outs of graduate research and graduate school.  Typically two major presentations are required in which you research and explain an advanced experimental technique used in chemical engineering research.

Summary of highly recommended courses for those interested in graduate school:

CM4650 – Polymer Rheology

MA 4515 – Introduction to Partial Differential Equations

MA 4525 – Applied Vector and Tensor Mathematics Introduction

CM5100 – Applied Mathematics for Chemical Engineers

CM5200 – Advanced Thermodynamics

CM5300 – Advanced Transport Phenomena

CM5400 – Advanced Chemical Engineering Kinetics

CM 5500 – Theory and Methods of Research