Overview:
Rutgers undergraduate students have the opportunity to earn a Microbial Biology M.S. degree in one year after graduating with a B.S. degree. Courses earning credit toward the Microbial Biology M.S. degree can be taken as an undergraduate student and then counted as credit earned for the M.S. degree. Advantages to the 4+1 program are the opportunity to obtain an advanced degree at minimal cost and minimal time and the option to continue undergraduate research projects at the graduate level. Plus one M.S. students also have the opportunity of switching to the Microbial Biology Ph.D. program as described on the M.S. First Year web page.
Entry requirements:
A minimum overall GPA of 3.0 is required. In addition, a minimum GPA of 3.0 is required in advanced (300 and 400) level life science courses. Any life science undergraduate major is acceptable but you must take microbiology related courses (see below) in order to enter the accelerated one year Microbial Biology M.S. program. While it is preferable that students enter the accelerated M.S. program immediately after their B.S. graduation students can apply to the accelerated program any time within 5 years of receiving their B.S. degree. Students without enough credits to enter the one year M.S. program can still apply to the normal two year M.S. program. Only students graduating from Rutgers are eligible for the plus one M.S. program.
Application procedure:
Students should submit a formal application for the "plus one" program by February 1 of their senior year at the Rutgers Graduate and Professional Admissions web site (note that the program is called "Microbial Biology - 5 Year (MS) New Brunswick"). In addition to the questions on the application form students should provide a Personal Statement explaining why they are interested in Microbiology and describe their undergraduate research (if any). A Resume and an unoffial transcript should also be uploaded.
General course rules for the Microbial Biology 4+1 program:
1) A minimum of 150 credits are required for the combined B.S. and M.S. degree.2) Up to 12 course credits at the 400 level taken as an undergraduate student can be applied toward the M.S. degree. Additionally, an unlimited number of 500 level course credits taken as an undergraduate can be applied to the M.S. degree. HOWEVER these credits must be in excess of the 120 credits needed for the B.S. degree. This means that if you earn a B.S. degree with 123 total credits then only 3 credits can be applied to the M.S. degree but if you earn a B.S. with 132 total credits then 12 credits can be applied to the M.S. degree.
3) Corollary to #1 and #2: Courses taken as an undergraduate student can count for COURSE requirements of both the B.S. and M.S. program (double counting allowed) but can not count toward the TOTAL CREDIT requirements of the two programs. A minimum of 120 credits are required for the Rutgers B.S. degree and a minimum of 30 credits are required for the Microbial Biology M.S. degree which is a minimum of 150 credits for the combined B.S. plus M.S. degrees.
4) Research or seminar courses taken as an undergraduate student can not be applied to the M.S. degree.
5) Only certain courses (partial list below) will be accepted as credit toward the Microbial Biology M.S. degree.
6) Courses taken as an undergrdauate must have B or better grades to count toward the Microbial Biology M.S. degree.
7) Both thesis M.S. and nonthesis M.S. options are possible. The nonthesis option can include up to 6 credits of research experiences at the graduate level. A thesis option M.S. requires a minimum of 6 credits of research experiences at the graduate level BUT because a M.S. thesis requires a lot of data it is advisable to work on an undergraduate research project while a B.S. student that can then be continued as an M.S. student and result in a thesis.
Partial list of courses that can be taken as an undergraduate student and counted toward the M.S. degree.
Note that other courses may be acceptable but require written permission from the Microbial Biology Program Director. The course in parentheses is the graduate version of the undergraduate course which is preferred (but not required) over the undergraduate version of the course for the 4+1 B.S. & M.S. program (discuss with the undergraduate program director of your major if the graduate version is acceptable in place of the undergraduate version as credit toward your major (or minor) requirements).
11:680:480 Microbial Genomics (or 16:682:504 Microbial Genetics)
11:680:481 Microbial Physiology (or 16:682:503 Microbial Physiology)
11:680:491 Microbial Ecology & Diversity (or 16:682:572 Microbial Ecology & Diversity)
11:680:494 Applied Microbiology (or 16:682:524 Applied and Industrial Microbiology)
11:115:423 Fundamentals of Genomics (or 16:682:534 Fundamentals of Microbial Genomics)
11:115:485 Advanced Methods for 3-D Structure Determination (or 16:682:532 Structural Biophysics)
11:067:404 Animal Diseases
11:126:407 Comparative Virology
01:146:474 Immunology (or 16:681:543 Current Concepts of Immunology)
11:216:405 Evolution of Infectious Disease
11:216:431 Fundamentals of Ecological and Environmental Modeling
11:375:411 Environmental Microbiology (or 16:375:510 Environmental Microbiology)
11:375:453 Soil Ecology
11:400:423 Food Microbiology
11:628:405 Molecular Microbial Oceanography (or 16:712:525 Molecular Microbial Oceanography)
11:628:476 History of the Earth System (or 16:712:560 History of the Earth System)
11:776:400 Fungi in the Environment
11:776:415 Fungi & Human Health (or 16:765:515 Fungi & Human Health)
11:776:485 Functional Genomics for Research
Example one year M.S. curriculum
The Microbial Biology M.S. curriculum is normally taken over two years and requires a minumum of 30 credits. While not advisable, a student could complete the normal M.S. degree in one year by taking 15 credits per semester. Example one year curriculas for thesis M.S., nonthesis M.S. with coursework only, and nonthesis M.S. with research are in the Microbial Biology One Year M.S. Degree PDF. By taking some of the required courses as an undergraduate student then fewer courses are required to complete the M.S. degree.